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Christa Pike woke up in hospital “angry and confused” after surviving a failed execution attempt in Tennessee, her lawyer said. She remains in critical care and is speaking only a limited amount, Reuters reported.
Her first questions were “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”, lawyer Randy Spivey told a news conference. He said Pike’s legal team had believed for days that she was brain dead and expected her to be taken off life support.
Pike, 50, began speaking on Tuesday, in what Spivey described as a “shock to everyone”. She has limited memories of the execution attempt on 30 September, he said.
According to her lawyer, Pike helped the execution team find a vein in her arm and was polite during the procedure. She later woke in hospital with a breathing tube in her throat. Both arms are now “tremendously swollen”, Spivey said.
Her lawyers said she also has a blood clot in one arm, pneumonia and difficulty swallowing. They said she is restrained by her hands and feet in her hospital bed.
Pike was taken to hospital after surviving two rounds of pentobarbital. She remained unconscious for days while medical staff worked to clear the drug from her body. Her legal team says they believe she is the only person to have survived a US execution attempt by lethal injection.
A judge on Wednesday ordered Tennessee to preserve evidence from the attempt, including items in the execution room such as IV lines and syringes, along with packaging, inserts and labels. The order also covers documentation of Pike’s psychological condition before, during and after the attempt.
The judge advised the state to take “special care” not to lose or accidentally delete information relevant to the case. Pike’s lawyers said the evidence could support a future lawsuit against the state.
Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Will Ayers argued that an emergency order was unnecessary because the state was already required to preserve evidence. Judge Chancellor I’Ashea Myles nevertheless issued the preservation order.
Spivey said Pike had been unable to communicate with her legal team while unconscious. Another lawyer, Luke Ihnen, asked the judge to grant her phone access and ensure her lawyers could visit her. He said officials had kept the team waiting for more than two hours during a recent hospital visit.
Ihnen also said prison officials were keeping Pike shackled to her hospital bed despite medical staff asking for the restraints to be removed. He asked that the state notify the lawyers 48 hours before any transfer from the hospital to another government-run facility.
Asked whether the state planned to reschedule Pike’s execution, Ayers said he did not know. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has paused executions in the state for the rest of the year and said he wants answers about what went wrong. The state’s prisons chief has said he is resigning following the failed execution.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The three had met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers. Shipp was 17 at the time and was spared the death penalty because he was not legally an adult; he remains in prison.
