Christa Pike, a 50-year-old death row inmate, was discharged from hospital Saturday following a botched execution on September 30 and has been returned to prison in Tennessee, according to a statement from her legal team.
Pike survived two lethal injections of pentobarbital, the drug used in Tennessee executions. She regained consciousness earlier this week and began speaking, an outcome that has left medical experts and her lawyers stunned. Her case is believed to be unprecedented. She is thought to be the only person to have survived a lethal injection execution attempt in the United States.
Pike has spent the last 30 years incarcerated. She was 18 years old when she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp for low-income young people. Shipp was not given the death penalty because he was not legally an adult at the time of the crime. He remains imprisoned.
Pike was the first woman scheduled for execution in Tennessee in over 200 years. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not explained why the execution failed, though the agency has defended the method it used. At a court hearing Wednesday, Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Will Ayers told the judge he did not know whether the state intends to attempt Pike's execution again.
A judge ordered the state to preserve all evidence from the failed injections, which could support future litigation against Tennessee.
Pike's lawyers said she is receiving ongoing medical care but was hospitalized with pneumonia and significant swelling in her arms. According to her attorney Randy Spivey, her first words upon waking were "Where am I?" and "Who are you?" He stated she is unable to swallow and feeling "angry and confused."
Pike's legal team said she was "grateful to the first responders and her medical team" and noted she faces "a long road to recovery." Her lawyers have renewed calls for her sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment without parole. The U.S. Supreme Court and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee both declined to block the execution before it took place.