Tennessee execution survivor Christa Pike has been released from a Nashville hospital and is back in the maximum-security prison where she was imprisoned for more than three decades before her botched lethal injection last month, her attorneys said.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” attorneys Kelly Gleason, Luke Ihnen and Randy Spivey announced Oct. 10.
Christa Pike
Pike, 50, was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center Sept. 30 in critical condition after surviving two doses of pentobarbital administered by the Tennessee Department of Corrections. She was initially believed to be brain dead but “to the shock of everyone — including the medical team — Christa woke up and began talking,” Spivey said previously.
The bungled execution included about an hour of failed attempts to place IVs in Pike’s arms and instances of her trying to talk personnel through the procedure. She reported that her arm felt like it was burning after the first dose of the sedative and became unconscious and started choking after the second, according to Spivey, who witnessed part of the procedure.
Pike is back on Death Row at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, her legal team said. “She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”
Pike was sentenced to death for her part in the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in about 200 years had lethal injection been successful.
The botched execution was preceded by months of court hearings in which Pike’s attorneys unsuccessfully attempted to convince authorities their client’s blood disorder would complicate IV insertion and that her lifelong history of sexual abuse, bipolar disorder and PTSD would constitute cruel and unusual punishment during any execution attempt.
The ordeal for Pike came after a long day of legal maneuvering. A federal appeals court stayed her execution the morning it was to occur, but that ruling was overturned later in the day by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In response to the botched execution — the second in the state in six months — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended capital punishment through the end of the year and ordered an independent investigation into the state’s lethal injection protocols. He also accepted the resignation of state prisons chief Frank Strada, who was linked to executions in Arizona that may have violated protocols.
Since the state failed in its attempt to execute Pike, her attorneys have asked Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison without parole and filed a motion requiring the state to preserve all equipment, drug containers, syringes and other items used in the failed effort to execute Pike. A judge granted the motion and subsequently reopened a lawsuit Pike filed in January challenging the state’s lethal injection protocols.
A clemency letter Spivey sent to Lee in early September invited the governor to meet Pike face to face.
“You will encounter a kind, empathetic and engaging woman who wants to help others,” the letter says. “A woman who feels deep remorse for the pain she has caused, understands the mistakes she has made, and knows that others can learn from them. A woman who knows that she will never leave prison but knows she can be useful where she is. You will encounter a woman who is deserving of mercy.”
Tennessee Attorney General John Ayers said in a court hearing that when or whether another execution date will be scheduled for Pike is up to the state Supreme Court, NPR reported. One of her attorneys responded that it would be “unconscionable that the state would try to execute her again.”
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