Christa Pike, a 50-year-old death row inmate in the United States, is "conscious and speaking" after surviving a failed execution attempt last week, her lawyers announced on Tuesday.
Pike is currently handcuffed in a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, where she continues to receive critical medical care. She was moved to the facility after surviving two lethal injections. Her legal team stated that she had previously been unconscious while medical personnel worked to flush pentobarbitol, the drug administered during the execution, from her system.
Her attorneys described her survival as "medically unprecedented" and stated that she is the only person known to have survived a completed execution attempt in the United States. Although her prognosis remains unclear, the lawyers said that "at a minimum, we expect a long recovery".
State authorities have not provided an explanation for the failure, nor have they confirmed whether they plan to make another attempt to execute Pike. Following the incident, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions in the state for the remainder of the year. The head of Tennessee's prison system also announced over the weekend that he plans to step down.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 years old when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Slemmer after meeting her at a job training camp for troubled youth.
