Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is "angry and confused about everything right now," her lawyers disclosed on October 7 — the first detailed account of her condition since she regained consciousness six days after the state's failed attempt to execute her. According to attorney Randy Spivey, Pike's first words upon waking were "Where am I, and who are you?" — and she is "very aware the state tried to execute her."
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. On September 30, Tennessee attempted to execute her by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill her, and she was taken unconscious to a Nashville-area hospital, where she was intubated and placed on a ventilator.
In a stunning twist, as late as Monday (October 5), her legal team believed Pike was brain dead, and the medical team was planning to remove life support on Tuesday. "But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone — including me, including her team, and including the medical team — Christa woke up and began talking," Spivey told reporters after a court hearing on Wednesday.
Her condition remains critical: a blood clot in one arm, pneumonia, "tremendously" swollen hands and arms she cannot move, inability to swallow or eat, limited speech, and cognitive confusion. Her prognosis is unclear, her lawyers said, "but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery." The Associated Press reports she is believed to be the first person in U.S. history to survive receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.
The political fallout is widening. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions for the remainder of the year while investigators examine what went wrong. This is Tennessee's second botched execution this year — in May, the execution of Tony Carruthers was aborted when prison officials could not establish intravenous lines.
A Nashville judge on Wednesday ordered the state to preserve syringes and other evidence from the execution attempt, as Pike's attorneys seek answers from the Department of Correction. Her lawyers said Pike has "suffered enough" and want the governor to commute her sentence — though they acknowledged they have been unable to get her consent to file a new lawsuit, as she can still speak only in a limited way.
The Pike case has renewed scrutiny of how American states carry out the death penalty, particularly the reliability of lethal injection. On Wednesday evening (October 7), Texas executed 46-year-old Jamaal Howard — the first execution in the United States since the botched attempt on Pike. Howard's lawyers had filed an emergency appeal citing the risk of a similarly botched lethal injection, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused a stay and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal without comment.
Three things to watch next: how far Pike's body can recover; what Tennessee's investigation concludes — a drug problem, an operator problem, or a systemic one; and whether the governor answers the commutation plea. An execution that failed to happen is turning into a trial of the American death penalty itself.