After experiencing two failed execution attempts, inmate Christia Pike has surprised her legal team with her ongoing recovery.
“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking and continues to receive critical medical care,” Pike’s attorneys Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason said in a statement to NBC News on Tuesday, October 6. “Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”
Pike, 50, remains handcuffed and shackled in a hospital after suffering injuries to her arms after two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her.
“We are incredibly grateful to the first responders and the medical team at the hospital who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her,” Pike’s attorneys added. “We also want to thank thousands from all over the world who sent messages offering prayers and support for Christa.”
Us has reached out to Pike’s legal team for additional comment. A news conference is expected to take place on Wednesday, October 7.
Pike made headlines after prison officials in Tennessee administered what were intended to be lethal injections on Wednesday, September 30, in her state-ordered execution for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer. (Pike was 18 at the time of the killing.)
When the injections failed to kill her, Pike — who would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years — was hospitalized and placed on a ventilator as staff worked to clear the pentobarbital from her system.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, traveled from her home in Florida to Nashville with her husband for the execution of her daughter’s killer.
“I broke down in tears,” Martinez told ABC Jacksonville affiliate WJXX after the failed execution. “She was laying on the table, talking, still laughing, picking up her head. … I think that the state owes me a big apology, and as a mother, I failed her.”
In 1996, Pike was found guilty of first-degree murder for beating, torturing and killing Slemmer in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus.
Pike previously told a friend that she planned to kill Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day.”
Governor Bill Lee has since opened an investigation into the failed executions, calling the case a “tragedy.”
“There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen,” he said in a statement to ABC News on Thursday, October 1. “It shouldn’t have happened. It’s the most difficult of circumstances as it relates to a sentence that should have been carried out by the state. It’s a tragedy, and it’s deeply disturbing to me that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better than that, and we’re going to make sure that happens.”
