Christa Pike’s advisor reveals what happened when she woke up from botched execution

Death row inmate Christa Pike has been left with no memory of her attempted execution at a Tennessee prison last week after surviving two lethal injections intended to end her life, a medical expert has said.

Attorneys for Pike, 50, announced she was awake and talking Tuesday – six days after she was raced to hospital for life-saving care when the twin doses of pentobarbital failed – branding her recovery a “medically unprecedented” event.

Speaking to The Independent, Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, who has been retained by Pike’s legal team, said: “She’s made some good recovery to this point.

“I understand that she is talking and now knows where she is. She has no memory of the execution itself. It’s unclear to me whether she possesses a full cognitive recovery. It’s too soon to really say.

“It could take weeks before that’s more clear. She also will have to recover her general strength. As a simple rule of thumb, I tell patients that one day in bed is one week of recovery.

“She has no doubt generalized muscle weakness,” the doctor continued. “She is still shackled to her gurney, which is what is usually done to prisoners who are in hospitals outside of a prison.

“Many risks remain, and she could also decline in spite of this current improved state.”

Pike was given two doses of the lethal drug at Riverbend maximum security prison in Nashville last Wednesday, only for witnesses to hear her snoring inside the chamber.

Pentobarbital is a barbiturate that slows activity of the brain and nervous system and often used by doctors to treat people suffering from seizures and convulsions. In high doses, it can cause suppression of breathing, heart failure and death.

Dr Zivot told The Independent Pike was likely either to have been given an ineffective dose of pentobarbital or an insufficient quantity.

“Even with circulating pentobarbital in her body, the medical care that she received was likely able to offset the negative impacts of those drugs,” he added. “Pentobarbital kills people because they are not getting medical care at the same time.”

He warned last week that Pike was at risk of sustaining a brain injury after receiving an insufficient quantity of the drug in her blood to cause the apnoea and cardiovascular event intended to kill her.

“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” he said at the time.

The convicted killer was initially described as being in a critical condition after being taken to hospital, only for her legal representatives to reveal in Tuesday’s statement: “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.”

The attorneys thanked the first responders “who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her,” noted that their client “is the only person known to have survived a complete execution attempt in the U.S.” and said they “continue to ask the Governor of Tennessee to commute Christa Pike’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

Gov. Bill Lee has suspended all executions in the state for the remainder of the year and ordered a third-party review into what happened while Frank Strada, the state’s commissioner for the Department of Correction, has announced his resignation.

Tennessee has yet to say whether it intends to try to execute Pike again, with much likely to depend on the extent of her recovery.

Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, joined Pike’s attorneys in stressing how unprecedented it was that Pike had survived her ordeal, telling the BBC she was “absolutely astonished” to learn she was conscious and speaking.

Prof Denno pointed out that there have been seven other cases in which prisoners have survived executions but, in those instances, their executioners were unable to find a vein into which to administer the fatal dose.

Pike “is the only person for whom some kind of toxin has been injected,” she said. “They did everything they were supposed to do as part of the execution process, and it simply didn’t work. This has never happened before.”

Pike’s lawyer Randy Spivey said last week that her executioners worked for an hour to administer the drugs to her, attempting to place at least seven needles in her left arm.

During the struggle to locate a vein, Pike even suggested where they might find one. “Please try here, please try here,” Spivey recalled her saying. “She told them over and over, please try higher on my shoulder.”

Pike complained about a feeling in her arm as though it were about to explode before she passed out, asking whether it was normal.

Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has said what Pike experienced was “singular and unparalleled” while others have wasted no time in calling for change.

March4Mercy Leader and Death Penalty Action co-founder Abraham Bonowitz urged Gov. Lee to commute Pike’s sentence to life imprisonment without parole Tuesday while Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, has called for the eradication of capital punishment.

Pointing to the failed attempt to kill another death row inmate, Tony Carruthers, in the same state earlier this year, she said: “Since the botched execution in May of this year, people from diverse political backgrounds across Tennessee have called for a pause in executions to examine the problems with the execution process.

“These pleas were ignored. The state of Tennessee has shown the world it cannot be trusted to implement capital punishment in a way that preserves human dignity and the rule of law. This has to stop now.”

A court hearing on Pike’s case is scheduled for Wednesday in Davidson County Chancery Court after her lawyer’s requested that evidence from the failed execution is preserved.

He team say this is needed to determine whether the Tennessee Department of Correction violated their client’s constitutional rights by subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishment.