Christa Pike was discharged from the hospital, her lawyers said. Tennessee hasn’t said whether it will try again.
Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who survived an attempt to execute her, has been discharged from the hospital 10 days later and returned to a prison rehabilitation center in Nashville, her lawyers said Saturday.
Pike, 50, is back at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been housed for more than 30 years, the attorneys said. The state has not said whether it will try again to execute her.
Tennessee tried to execute Pike by lethal injection on Sept. 30. Her lawyers said she remained conscious after the first dose of pentobarbital and that two doses did not end her life. Her arms were swollen, burned and blistered, and she was taken to a hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and later woke and began talking. Her lawyers said she felt “angry and confused” and faces a long recovery.
Gov. Bill Lee ordered an independent review of the state’s execution procedures. Pike’s lawyers said it does not go far enough, noting she spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement. Lee had denied her clemency before the attempt.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and killing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Job Corps program in Knoxville, when Pike was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
This report is based on information from The Washington Post, CBC News, WZTV and the Tennessean.