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, as they head to court on Wednesday seeking a court order requiring preservation of all evidence relating to the botched exercise by the state.
Pike, ۵۰, survived two doses of pentobarbital, a sedative, as Tennessee officials attempted to put her to death last Wednesday 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 ۲۰۰ 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 on Tuesday.
Her legal team will ask a court on at a hearing on Wednesday to require the Tennessee department of correction to preserve all “relevant physical, written and electronic evidence” related to the failed execution, court documents said. A press conference is also scheduled.
Her attorneys said they were 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”.
“She is the only person known to have survived a complete execution attempt in the US. Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time. We continue to ask the Governor of Tennessee to commute Christa Pike’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Pike’s attorneys added.
The statement was the first indication that Pike has improved since an ambulance carried her away from a Nashville prison on the night of ۳۰ September.
Witnesses to the attempt to execute Pike described how 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.
Following the botched execution attempt, one of Pike’s lawyers, Randy Spivey, called the process “cruel and torturous”, adding that he had counted seven needles in Pike’s left arm, “one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her”. Her lawyers had warned before the execution that officials might struggle to locate veins and cause her suffering in the process, but the state had pushed to proceed and the US supreme court allowed the prison to move forward.
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. Strada was facing intensifying scrutiny, with lawyers saying Pike’s case was the fifth “botched” execution under his leadership across two states.
Pike and her boyfriend, who was ۱۷ at the time, killed ۱۹-year-old Colleen Slemmer, one of their classmates at Knoxville Job Corps, in ۱۹۹۵.
According to prosecutors, Pike was worried Slemmer was trying to take her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, away from her. Together, they lured Slemmer into a wooded area behind the agriculture campus steam plant at the University of Tennessee on ۱۲ January ۱۹۹۵, tortured and killed her.
Shipp was convicted of first-degree murder in ۱۹۹۷ and was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Pike has never denied her involvement in Slemmer’s killing. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
As a child, Pike had been subject to various abuse, including multiple rapes by different men, as well as beatings by her relatives.
Pike later underwent nearly ۳۰ years of solitary confinement while on death row.
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?”
Sam Levin and the Associated Press contributed to this report
