Christa Pike is conscious and speaking after botched execution attempt, lawyers say | Tennessee

Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who survived the state’s attempted execution, is awake and talking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her lawyers said Tuesday.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital as Tennessee authorities attempted to put her to death last Wednesday. in a case that shocked many people in America and made headlines around the world. She was to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years.

“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, talking and continues to receive essential medical care. Despite the severe damage to her arms, she remains handcuffed and chained to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains uncertain but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement.

Her lawyers said they were grateful to the hospital’s first responders and medical team “who treated Christa like a human and provided her with exceptional care.”

“She is the only person known to have survived a full execution attempt in the United States. Christa is a survivor and will recover one day at a time. We continue to call on the Governor of Tennessee to commute Christa Pike’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Pike’s attorneys added.

The statement is the first indication that Pike has improved since an ambulance took her from a Nashville jail on the night of Sept. 30.

Witnesses to Pike’s attempted execution described how they heard she was choking and struggling for an hour after receiving the first injection. She was later hospitalized after a second dose failed to kill her. At the hospital, she was placed on a ventilator and was in critical condition.

Following the botched execution attempt, one of Pike’s attorneys, Randy Spivey, called the process “cruel and tortuous,” adding that he counted seven needles in Pike’s left arm, “one of which appeared bent when it was removed.”

The disastrous attempt drew widespread condemnation across the political spectrum and among supporters of banning the death penalty. Tennessee prison chief Frank Strada also subsequently resigned, with Pike’s experience the fifth botched execution under his watch in two states since 2022.

Pike and her boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate of theirs at the Knoxville Job Corps, in 1995. The case made national headlines because of the ages of those involved and the brutality of the killing.

According to prosecutors, Pike feared Slemmer was trying to take away her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Together, they lured Slemmer to a wooded area behind the steam plant on the University of Tennessee agricultural campus on January 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer’s stomach and throat with a box cutter before smashing his head with a rock.

Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, and Pike later showed a friend a fragment of Slemmer’s skull.

Shipp was convicted of first-degree murder in 1997 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Pike never denied his involvement in Slemmer’s murder. He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old. It took me many years to realize the severity of what I had done. Even longer to come to terms with how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, their sister, their friend. It sickens me now to think that I had the capacity to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement included in his clemency petition.

As a child, Pike was subjected to various abuses, including multiple rapes by different men, as well as beatings at the hands of those close to him.

Pike then endured nearly 30 years of solitary confinement while on death row.

Following the botched execution attempt, Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who is perhaps the best-known advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in America, told the Guardian: “This is the essence of cruelty. Take a conscious, imaginative human being, give him a date for his death, make him anticipate it over and over again, then take him out and try to kill him.

“She was left defenseless as they deliberately tried to kill her – what greater mental torture is there for a human being?

The Associated Press contributed to this report