Christa Pike reportedly asked “Where am I?” after regaining consciousness in a hospital nearly a week after a botched execution left her critically injured and temporarily on a ventilator, according to one of her attorneys.
Pike, 50, continues to receive medical care after she survived being administered two lethal doses of pentobarbital and was hospitalized following the failed Sept. 30 execution in Nashville, her attorneys said.
She was believed to have been brain dead and that she was going to be taken off her life support on Tuesday, when “to the shock of everyone,” she woke up and started talking, one of her attorneys, Randy Spivey with the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender, told reporters Wednesday.
Spivey said he was not in the room at the time when she woke up, but he believes the first thing she said was, “Where am I and who are you?”
“There’s still a lot of cognitive confusion,” Spivey said during a press briefing. “I think she is angry and confused about everything right now.”
Spivey said she is aware that the state tried to execute her and has asked about her team and the victim’s family.
Pike’s attorneys described her recovery as “medically unprecedented” and said they expect a “long road to recovery.” She has pneumonia and a blood clot in one of her arms, according to Spivey, who described her arms and hands as “tremendously swollen.”
“We do not know what, if any, function she will regain in her arms. But we do know that there’s a long road ahead, and that is just the physical toll that all of this has taken,” he said. “Neither we nor Christa have even begun to process what this means for her mental health.”
Pike, the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row, was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Her attempted execution by lethal injection came after a series of last-minute legal challenges.
Her attorneys said Tuesday they continue to ask Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
“We are incredibly grateful to the first responders and the medical team at the hospital who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her,” her attorneys said in a statement Tuesday. “We also want to thank thousands from all over the world who sent messages offering prayers and support for Christa.”
The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed Tuesday that Pike remains hospitalized but said it could not provide details of her medical condition due to federal privacy laws.
Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion in Davidson County Chancery Court last week seeking an order requiring the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all relevant physical, written and electronic evidence related to the execution attempt. A judge granted the motion during a hearing on Wednesday.
According to the motion, Pike “could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly” while being administered two lethal doses of pentobarbital, at one point stating that her arm “feels like it’s about to burst open.” At least seven needles were used to gain IV access, with one “bent in a 90-degree angle when it was removed,” the motion stated.
The motion described pentobarbital, a sedating medication, as being “caustic and highly alkaline” and that it “burns upon contact.” Both of Pike’s arms were “swollen, burned, and blistered” when she arrived at a Nashville-area hospital, the motion stated.
Pike had raised concerns about a lethal injection in the months prior to her scheduled execution, arguing that her “thrombocytosis, post traumatic stress disorder and small veins ‘make it sure or very likely that there is a substantial risk that she will experience unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace,"” the motion stated.
During Wednesday’s hearing on the motion, one of Pike’s attorneys, Luke Ihnen from the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, said that “based on what we know about Miss Pike’s current condition, these allegations that were made in the complaint certainly appear to be at least related to the botched execution.”
Pike is the first person reported to have survived lethal injection after being given medications, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, whose executive director referred to the failed attempt as “the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era.”
In the wake of the botched execution, Gov. Lee ordered a temporary halt to scheduled executions in the state and Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada resigned.
The governor’s office said in a statement that it has also appointed former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to conduct an independent review of the Tennessee Department of Correction’s execution attempt that “will seek to determine whether the protocol was followed and consider whether additional recommendations are necessary to ensure the State’s protocol continues to be lawful and effective.”
“The State previously retained Stanton in 2022 to conduct an independent review of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol. His work prompted the State and Attorney General’s Office to substantially rewrite the protocol before executions resumed,” the statement further said.
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