Christa Pike survives a double dose of lethal injection drugs. Then she wakes up 6 days later and realizes she is still shackled to her hospital bed

Christa Pike, 50, was sentenced to death by Tennessee for the 1995 murder of her classmate at the time, Colleen Slemmer. However, when executioners attempted to carry out this sentence on September 30, Pike survived after receiving two doses of the drug used for lethal injections. At that point, she was rushed to the hospital for medical care.

Pike’s lawyers now claim that she’s awake and speaking as of October 6, after she spent six days unconscious and on a ventilator. Pike’s lawyers released a statement saying, “Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented.”

Pike’s attorneys tried to get a stay of execution earlier

The case of Pike’s role in the murder of Slemmer has been going on for three decades now, as her original sentencing was in 1996. Pike’s attorneys tried to prevent the execution before its scheduled date, but the state’s supreme court denied their requests and cleared the way for the execution to take place using lethal injection.

Had the injections succeeded, Pike would’ve been the first woman executed by Tennessee in over 200 years. However, that ended up not being the case when Pike was given two separate doses of pentobarbital and survived both of them. The governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, has ordered a third-party review of how the execution ended up being a failure of this magnitude.

The legal team for Pike described the execution attempt as cruel and torturous, and her prognosis is unclear

The members of Pike’s legal team who were present for the execution attempt shared what they witnessed, saying that it took an hour for the execution team to even establish an intravenous line, which was a struggle for them. Following the botched execution, Pike’s team is now requesting that her sentence be commuted by arguing that the state of Tennessee violated her right to an execution free of cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, after almost a week, Pike has improved enough to be conscious and off the ventilator, though the damage to her arms remains. Dr. Joel Zivot, who was consulted as an expert due to his position as a professor of anesthesiology and surgery, said that this is a positive update for Pike and could lead to a good recovery, but it could take weeks to see what her recovery will look like in the long term and whether she might reach a condition where the state could try to execute her again.

Dr. Zivot noted that Pike’s condition doesn’t guarantee a recovery, and there are still bad things that can happen regardless of how well the staff does their jobs. Meanwhile, the Department of Correction for Tennessee has not provided updates about Pike, but the state has suspended executions for the remainder of the year.

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