Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is conscious and speaking in hospital, six days after the state’s failed attempt to execute her by lethal injection, her attorneys said Tuesday.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital during the 30 September execution attempt, which was carried out over her 1995 conviction for the beating and stabbing death of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer.
Her attorneys said the lethal injection failed to kill her but left her arms burned and blistered.
“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement. “Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented.”
They said Pike’s prognosis remained unclear and that she faced a long recovery.
Her lawyers also thanked first responders and hospital staff “who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her.”
As recently as Sunday, Pike’s attorneys had said she remained unconscious and dependent on a ventilator.
Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike’s legal team, said her latest condition was encouraging but warned that significant risks remained.
“She’s still in the ICU,” he said. “She has recovered to a certain degree that she’s able to be off a ventilator and able to speak, but in no way would I announce her free of further serious risk. There’s still a lot of bad things that can happen here, even when everyone is doing their job well.”
Zivot said Pike’s improvement “bodes well for a good recovery”, but added that it could take weeks or months to determine the extent of her recovery and whether she could regain sufficient competency for the state to attempt another execution.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction said the department could provide no information beyond confirming that Pike remained hospitalised on Tuesday.
Pike’s attorneys are due in court on Wednesday as they seek information about what happened during the failed execution.
They are asking the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve evidence connected to the 30 September attempt, including drug lot numbers, records and other information.
Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles has scheduled a status conference for Wednesday morning.
Pike’s attorneys are also continuing to ask outgoing Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
“Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time,” her attorneys said.
Lee halted further executions after Pike’s hospitalisation and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
The failed execution has also raised questions about whether Tennessee could legally attempt to execute Pike again.
Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law professor who has studied execution methods for 36 years, said Pike could have arguments that another attempt would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
She also said a second attempt could raise double jeopardy concerns, although legal precedent in other failed executions is different.
In some cases, states have been permitted to make another attempt when execution teams failed to establish a suitable intravenous line.
Denno said Pike’s case was different because the lethal drug was administered.
“They carried out every aspect of the execution,” Denno said. “She didn’t die, but every process they intended, they did it.”
Seattle University Law Professor Michael Russo, who previously handled capital cases as a public defender in Los Angeles, described the failed execution as horrible but questioned whether the US Supreme Court would prevent another attempt on double-jeopardy grounds.
“There’s nobody else in the history of the death penalty in this country who has gone through what she’s been through,” Russo said.
But he added: “I think what this Supreme Court would say is, her sentence was to die, to be executed, not to suffer an attempt at execution.”
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