Christa Pike is conscious and speaking after a failed execution attempt in Tennessee last week, according to her legal team. The 50-year-old remains in critical care and is handcuffed to her hospital bed, her attorneys said Tuesday.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Corrections officials administered two doses of pentobarbital last Wednesday, then transferred Pike to a Nashville hospital for treatment after the execution attempt did not result in her death.
Her lawyers previously reported that she was unconscious while medical staff worked to clear pentobarbital from her system. On Tuesday they called her recovery “medically unprecedented” and said her long-term outlook remains uncertain, adding that at a minimum they expect an extended recovery period.
They said she is the only person known to have survived a completed execution attempt in the United States. State authorities have not said whether they will seek to execute Pike again, and they have not provided an explanation for the failed attempt.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions for the remainder of the year, and the head of the state’s prison system said over the weekend that he plans to resign.
Christa Pike medical concerns and expert view
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer after meeting her at a job training program for troubled teens.
Dr Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist advising Pike’s defense, said the two pentobarbital doses would have been lethal had they entered her bloodstream under normal circulation. He suggested a likely scenario is that the drug spread through tissue under the skin rather than entering a vein.
Dr Zivot said last week that a brain injury is possible because resuscitation efforts were not immediate, and that it would take at least a week for the pentobarbital level to fall enough to allow a reliable neurological exam. He cautioned that even with all available interventions, her survival prospects were uncertain and that she could face serious long-term medical conditions.
Pike’s attorneys have long argued that her medical history and anatomy, including thrombocytosis and small veins, increased the risk of unnecessary pain and complications with lethal injection. On Tuesday they said she has suffered severe damage to her arms.