Christa Pike released from hospital and back in prison after botched execution attempt | Christine Pike

Christa Pike has been released from the hospital after surviving a failed attempted execution by lethal injection in Tennessee on September 30 and is back in prison, her lawyers announced Saturday.

Pike, 50, returned to the Deborah K Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been imprisoned for three decades, her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement.

“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for the care provided under these extraordinary circumstances,” Pike’s attorneys added. “She continues to receive medical care at the prison and we will continue to monitor her recovery. »

Saturday’s update on Pike came 10 days after the death row inmate was given two doses of pentobarbital, a lethal injection drug, in what turned out to be a botched execution attempt. She was hospitalized after surviving the botched execution and was declared brain dead on Monday.

But in a shocking reversal, on Thursday her lawyer said she was “up and walking” – although she remained “somewhat foggy” and couldn’t use her arms much.

Pike said his arms burned during the botched execution and asked if it was supposed to feel that way. Witnesses in the room said “nothing was normal,” while officials claimed they were following every step of the Tennessee-approved execution protocol.

There has been no official explanation as to why Pike survived the execution. Medical experts speculate that some or much of the medication may have escaped his vein and spread into surrounding tissue, one of his veins burst, the medication was defective, or a combination of these factors.

His lawyers had pointed out a few months earlier that Pike’s veins were a problem.

Pike was convicted in 1995 for the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, then 18, and her classmate at the Knoxville Job Corps. According to court filings, Pike, who was also 19 at the time, feared that Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17.

Shipp and Pike were convicted of taking Slemmer to a wooded part of the University of Tennessee campus and murdering her. She was sentenced to the death penalty and Shipp was sentenced to life in prison because he was under 18.

After Slemmer’s killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorder, his lawyers said.

“It took me many years to realize the gravity of what I had done,” Pike said in a previous request for clemency. “Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It makes me sick now to think I had the capacity to commit such a crime.”

Pike’s survival of the botched execution shocked many people in the United States and abroad and galvanized criticism of the death penalty.

Tennessee’s top prison official has announced his resignation.

Meanwhile, state Governor Bill Lee suspended executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis canceled a planned lethal injection execution in the state on Friday.

But they continue elsewhere.

For example, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday that it planned to broadcast live the execution by firing squad in December of former military psychiatrist Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas, drawing condemnation from the UN.

Donald Trump said Saturday that Hassan “was vicious — he was violent” and that he would “make a decision” about plans to livestream his execution.

“There are two ideas: don’t show it and show it,” the president remarked. “Because you know that by showing it, maybe other people won’t do what he did. So, I will make a decision at the end of the day. I know what the military would like to do, but we will make a decision.”