Christa Pike, who regained consciousness almost six days after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, is aware of what happened and “angry and confused,” one of her attorneys said.
Pike, 50, survived despite receiving two lethal doses of pentobarbital on September 30. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.
“She is very aware of what they did to her up to a point,” attorney Randy Spivey said following a court hearing in Nashville where a judge told the state to save evidence from the execution attempt.
“On Monday night, it was our understanding that Christa was brain dead and that life support would be removed the next day,” Spivey said.
“But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone ... Christa woke up and began talking.”
Spivey, who was not with Pike when she woke up, said he was told her first words were, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”
The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the only person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.
Her lawyers said she still can't move her arms or swallow, her prognosis remains unclear and that she has a long road to recovery. Her arms were burned and blistered by the attempted execution and she is handcuffed to the hospital bed, they said.
The failed execution has renewed scrutiny of how states carry out the death penalty, in particular the use of lethal injection. Texas was set to carry out the first execution in the US since Tennessee attempted to put Pike to death.
Christa Pike's attorneys want evidence preserved
Pike’s attorneys are seeking a court order to require the prison system to preserve information from the attempted execution, including drug lot numbers, needles, execution logs and other information.
Early arguments focused on whether the request should be heard in a Nashville Chancery Court or the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Attorneys with the Tennessee attorney general’s office wrote in a Tuesday court filing that a court order is unnecessary because the prison system is “obliged to maintain this evidence in other cases and must assure it is preserved”. They said state officials have taken “the necessary steps to obtain medical care for Pike and ascertain what occurred”.
Republican Governor Bill Lee called what happened “deeply disturbing” and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred”. The governor postponed the state’s only other execution scheduled for this year.
The state's prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution.
Christa Pike's recovery remains uncertain
Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on the possibility that a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue rather than entering her bloodstream. Pike’s attorneys wrote in their court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown”.
The attempted execution got underway around 7.30pm on September 30 when Pike was given a chance to make a final statement. About five minutes later, Pike raised her head and said her arm was hurting. At some point she appeared to lose consciousness, but she could be heard audibly breathing until media were escorted from the witness room at 8.53pm. An ambulance arrived at the prison at 9.14pm to take Pike to a hospital.
Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike’s legal team, said it could be weeks or months before anyone knows exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored so the state can try again to execute her.
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