Christa Pike has a “long road to recovery” after Tennessee’s failed execution attempt that left her unconscious and on life support for six days, her lawyer, Randy Spivey, said at a news conference Wednesday.
In a miraculous development, Pike awoke and started speaking on Tuesday, but she is far from out of the woods. Spivey described several medical issues, including a blood clot in one arm, pneumonia, the inability to swallow and no function in her arms.
“Neither we nor Christa have even begun to process what this means for her mental health,” Spivey said.
Pike, 50, became the first person to survive two doses of a lethal injection after Tennessee attempted to execute her last week for the murder of a classmate three decades ago.
Doctors have told NBC News that it appeared most of the pentobarbital — the drug used in the lethal injection — entered her arm rather than her bloodstream, having enough power to put her to sleep but not to stop her heart or slow her breathing.
As of Monday night, Spivey said it was his understanding that Pike was brain-dead. Life support was supposed to be removed on Tuesday, he said.
“But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team, and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking,” Spivey said. “I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning.”
While Spivey said he was not in the room when Pike woke up, he said the first thing she said was, “Where am I and who are you?”
Pike is angry and confused and wants to know what happened to her, Spivey said. He said she asked about her team and about the victim’s family.
Still, “she is very aware that the state tried to execute her,” Spivey said.
Spivey said that Pike was cooperative during the execution attempt, even helping the execution team find a good vein for her IV.
“She was kind and polite as they worked for an hour, stabbing her arm with needle after needle, and then she felt the burn of the pentobarbital, and then she woke up in a hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know with a tube down her throat,” he said.
He added, “All of this was foreseeable and foreseen.”
“What happened to Christa is exactly what the state was warned would happen,” Spivey continued. Pike’s legal team had fought execution by lethal injection, citing venous issues Pike has that would likely cause issues in a lethal injection.
The news conference followed a status hearing in Tennessee court Wednesday, during which Chancellor I’Ashea L. Myles ruled that the state must preserve any relevant evidence in connection with the failed execution.
“Today’s hearing was just a first step of many to preserve and enforce Christa’s constitutional rights after this unprecedented botched execution,” one of the attorneys, Luke Ihnen, said during a news conference after court Wednesday.
“As I said repeatedly, we have not asked the state to turn over any evidence at this point,” he continued. “Only demanding that they preserve it so that her lawyers, experts and the public can learn what really happened Wednesday night.”
In court, Ihnen argued, “The state has made no promises that Miss Pike will not be subject to our future execution, and the evidence that we are seeking to preserve now is relevant for any future challenge that she makes.”
Myles ultimately ruled in favor of Pike’s team, stating that Tennessee must preserve any and all relevant evidence, including but not limited to: IV lines and needles, medical supplies and records, any drugs used with anything from the manufacturer, photographs, video recordings, handwritten notes, checklists and any witness accounts.
FOR SUBSCRIBERS‘Still in this very long day that started on Oct. 7th’
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThis voting bloc holds the key to the midterms
FOR SUBSCRIBERS‘Still in this very long day that started on Oct. 7th’
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThis voting bloc holds the key to the midterms
“The state will have no problem doing this because you all are already doing that,” Myles said. She said if anything has already been discarded, the state must work to “claw back that information,” and ensure going forward that no further information is discarded or destroyed.
Additionally, Ihnen asked Myles to order that the Tennessee Department of Corrections give their team 48 hours’ notice before Pike is moved, to remove her shackles while she is in a hospital bed and to give her access to a phone or a tablet.
He also asked that the legal team receive regular visits with Pike, noting they had to wait in the lobby of the hospital for two-and-a-half hours when they tried to see her on Tuesday.
Pike was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. She has been on death row for more than 30 years for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. It remains unclear what her future could look like and whether the state will attempt to execute her again.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee insisted in the hours after the Sept. 30 execution attempt that the team — whose members’ identities are shrouded in secrecy — followed the state’s protocol well. But days later, he announced that the state’s top prison official, Frank Strada, would be stepping down this month.
In a statement, Strada said he believed the state Department of Correction had carried out its responsibilities “in accordance with the established protocol.” But stepping aside, he added, was in the “best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.”
Lee also ordered an independent review of the failed execution and paused all executions in the state for the rest of the year.
Pike’s was the second failed lethal injection in the state this year. Tony Carruthers’ execution in May was stopped after the state Department of Corrections struggled to find a vein to set a backup injection line.
