Christa Pike back in prison 10 days after failed execution
A judge has ordered Tennessee to preserve all evidence from the failed execution, while the state corrections department has yet to say why it did not go as planned.
Christa Pike has been discharged from hospital and returned to the Tennessee prison where Pike has spent the past 30 years, 10 days after surviving two lethal injections, Pike’s lawyers said on 10 October.
Pike, 50, is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, according to a statement from the attorneys. It is unclear what treatment is being given there, and the lawyers had previously said Pike faced a “long road to recovery”.
The lawyers said Pike was “grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances”.
Tennessee tried to execute Pike on 30 September. Two doses of the drug pentobarbital were given but Pike did not die, and was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
Pike was the first woman scheduled to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
The legal team believed for days that Pike was brain dead. On 6 October Pike woke up and began to speak, lawyer Randy Spivey said, and the first words were “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”
At a press conference the next day, the lawyers said Pike had pneumonia and significant swelling in the arms and could not swallow. “We don’t know the toll all of this will take,” Spivey said of Pike’s mental health, adding that Pike felt “angry and confused”.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said why the execution did not go as planned, but it has defended the method it used. Governor Bill Lee has paused executions in the state for the rest of the year.
At a court hearing on 7 October, the BBC reported, Assistant Attorney General Will Ayers told the judge that Ayers did not know whether the state intends to try to execute Pike again. The judge ordered the state to preserve all evidence relating to the failed injections, which could form the basis of a future lawsuit.
Pike’s lawyers have renewed their call for the sentence to be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Pike and then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for low-income young people. Shipp was spared the death penalty because Shipp was not legally an adult when the crime was committed, and Shipp remains in prison.
