Christa Pike discharged from hospital ten days after botched execution in Tennessee
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Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection, has been moved back to prison after being discharged from hospital, her attorneys have said.
Pike, 50, was discharged from the hospital and is back at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said in a statement.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” her attorneys said on Saturday.
Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital as the state attempted to execute her by lethal injection on 30 September for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.
She had been in a hospital since the failed execution. The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the first person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.
Her legal team announced Tuesday she had woken up and begun talking and revealed Wednesday she had no memory of her ordeal and was “angry and confused” about what had happened to her.
Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee has suspended the state’s remaining execution scheduled for this year, called what happened to Pike “deeply disturbing” and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
Supporters of Christa believe the death penalty is an unfair punishment given her age and the mental state she was in after years of sexual abuse. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years if the lethal injections worked.
Pentobarbital slows the activity of the brain and nervous system and is 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.
Earlier this week, medical experts told The Independent that Pike had no memory of the execution itself.
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.
