Christa Pike Regains Consciousness Six Days After Botched Lethal Injection Execution

Lawyers for Christa Pike, who survived two lethal injection execution attempts at a Tennessee prison, said she “has regained consciousness and is able to speak,” six days after her botched execution in an unprecedented incident.

The lawyers explained that despite severe damage to her arms, she remains handcuffed and strapped to her bed, while her recovery represents a medically unprecedented case. They said it is still too early to determine the outcome of her condition, but they expect at minimum a long recovery period.

This statement was the first indication of improvement in Pike’s condition since she was transported by ambulance from a Nashville prison last Wednesday.

Christa Pike, 50, who was scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries, survived after being administered two lethal doses of pentobarbital, a potent barbiturate.

Since then, she has been in critical condition and on a ventilator, according to brief updates provided by her lawyers, who have not been allowed to visit her at the hospital.

Her lawyers added in the statement, “We continue to urge the governor of Tennessee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” recalling the horrific forms of violence, particularly sexual violence, that Christa Pike endured since childhood, and her having spent “nearly 30 years in solitary confinement” in the “death row unit.”

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colin Slager, when she was 18 years old.

The botched execution attempt of Christa Pike has reignited debate over the death penalty in the United States.

Governor Bill Lee, who ordered a suspension of executions in the state on Thursday and an independent investigation into the failure of Pike’s execution, announced his acceptance of the resignation of the Tennessee Department of Correction commissioner.