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

Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who survived the state’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said on Tuesday.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital as Tennessee officials attempted to put her to death in a case that shocked many in America and created headlines around the world. She was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking and continues to receive critical medical care. 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,” attorneys for Pike said in a statement.

Her attorneys said they are 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”. They added Pike was “still handcuffed and ‌shackled to the bed”.

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

Witnesses to the attempt to execute Pike described how they they heard she was choking and struggling for an hour after receiving the first injection. She was then hospitalized after a second dose failed to kill her. In hospital she was put on a ventilator and had been in critical condition.

The disastrous attempt sparked widespread condemnation across the political spectrum and among advocates for banning the death penalty. Tennessee’s prison chief, Frank Strada, also resigned in the aftermath as Pike’s experience was the fifth botched execution under his leadership across two states since 2022.

Pike was given a death for the torture and killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps, in 1995. Pike was 18 at the time. Her then boyfriend and co-defendant, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 and was ineligible for the death penalty. He received a sentence of life imprisonment.

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

“She was rendered defenceless as they deliberately attempted to kill her – what greater mental torture for a human being is there?”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

The Guardian wp:paragraph