USAupdated 45m ago2 min read
Christa Pike Is Conscious And Speaking After Tennessee Failed Execution Attempt, Lawyers Say
Christa Pike is conscious and speaking from a hospital after Tennessee's botched execution. She remains in critical medical care with an unclear prognosis and long recovery ahead.
Pike wakes after botched
Christa Pike survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her after authorities gave her two lethal injections of pentobarbital, and her lawyers said Tuesday that she is "conscious and speaking" while she receives critical medical care in hospital. Pike, 50, was transferred to a hospital in Nashville after the failed execution attempt last Wednesday, and she remained unconscious while medical staff cleared her body of the injected pentobarbital.
Pike's lawyers said her recovery is "medically unprecedented," and they said at a minimum they "expect a long recovery" even as her prognosis remains unclear. Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, told the BBC that she was "absolutely astonished" that Pike is conscious and speaking, and she said Pike is the only person known to have survived a completed execution attempt in the US.
Court fight and review
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended all executions for the rest of the year, and the head of prisons in the state said over the weekend that he plans to resign, after Pike's hospitalization following the failed execution attempt.
Pike's attorneys are set to go to court Wednesday as they seek to learn more about what happened in the failed lethal injection, and they are seeking a court order requiring the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve evidence.
Chancery Court Judge I'Ashea Myles scheduled a Wednesday morning status conference, and Pike's attorneys continue to ask Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
NPR described how a federal circuit court stayed the execution, and it said the stay meant waiting for nine hours at the prison, barred from leaving the grounds, before the prison communications director told witnesses: "It's a go."
What comes next
Dr. Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike's defence team, told the BBC that "Most people who get lethal injection die from it," and he said the fact that Pike survived was unusual.
Zivot told the BBC that it would take "at least a week" for the amount of pentobarbital in Pike's system to dissipate and enable "a good neurologic examination," and he said a brain injury is "very possible" since resuscitation efforts were not undertaken right away.
Zivot warned that it could be weeks or months before anyone knows exactly what Pike's recovery will look like and whether her competency could be restored to a level that might enable the state to try to execute her again.
The execution protocol is the guidebook the Department of Correction writes for itself, and it described how a black curtain hangs in front of the window inside the death chamber while IV lines are inserted into the condemned prisoner.