‘Against all odds’: Christa Pike awake and speaking after botched Tennessee execution

Nashville: Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate who survived an attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said.

“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,′ attorneys for Pike said in a statement on Tuesday (US time).

“Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented.

“Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”

The attorneys said they were grateful for the first responders and the medical team at the hospital “who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her”.

The statement was the first indication that Pike had improved since an ambulance carried her away from a Nashville prison last Wednesday.

Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital as they attempted to put her to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. The lethal injection drug didn’t kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were left burned and blistered.

Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike’s legal team, said the development “bodes well for a good recovery”.

But he said it could be weeks or months before anyone knew exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored to a level that might enable the state to try again to execute her.

“She’s still in the ICU,” he said. “She has recovered to a certain degree that she’s able to be off a ventilator and able to speak, but in no way would I announce her free of further serious risk.

“There’s still a lot of bad things that can happen here, even when everyone is doing their job well.”

A spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction said she could provide no information other than that Pike remained hospitalised on Tuesday.

Pike’s attorneys are set to go to court on Wednesday as they seek to learn more about what happened in the failed lethal injection.

The attorneys are seeking a court order requiring the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve evidence, including drug lot numbers, records and other information from the September 30 attempted execution. Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles scheduled a Wednesday morning status conference in the case.

Pike’s attorneys said in their statement that they continued to ask Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time,” her attorneys said.

Lee halted further executions following Pike’s hospitalisation and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred”.

US Senator Marsha Blackburn, the state’s Republican candidate to replace him, called on the state to explore other methods of execution to ensure it can continue carrying out capital punishment.

Some legal experts have questioned whether the state would be able to try to execute Pike again.

In addition to questions about competency – whether she can understand why she would be put to death – Pike has strong arguments that it would be cruel and unusual to try again, and that it would violate the prohibition on double jeopardy, trying or punishing someone twice for the same offence, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law professor who has studied execution methods for 36 years.

“She has satisfied this very, very high standard for cruel and unusual punishment,” Denno said. “She also has a very good double-jeopardy argument. They carried out every aspect of the execution. She didn’t die, but every process they intended, they did it.”

Seattle University Law Professor Michael Russo, who handled capital cases as a public defender in Los Angeles, called the failed execution horrible, but said he doubted whether the Supreme Court would stop the state from trying again on double-jeopardy grounds, should it decide to do so.

“There’s nobody else in the history of the death penalty in this country who has gone through what she’s been through,” Russo said. But, he added, “I think what this Supreme Court would say is, her sentence was to die – to be executed – not to suffer an attempt at execution.”

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.