US death row inmate Christa Pike is “conscious and speaking” after surviving a failed execution attempt in the US state of Tennessee last week, her lawyers say.
Pike, 50, continues to receive critical medical care while handcuffed in hospital, according to a statement from her attorneys on Tuesday.
She was sentenced to death following her conviction for murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995. But Pike survived two lethal injections last Wednesday and was transferred to a hospital in Nashville for treatment.
Her lawyers had said in the days afterwards that she was unconscious while medical staff cleared her body of the pentobarbital injected during the execution attempt.
Pike’s lawyers said on Tuesday that her recovery is “medically unprecedented”, and while her prognosis remains unclear, “at a minimum, we expect a long recovery”.
They said she is the only person known to have survived a completed execution attempt in the US.
Authorities have not yet said whether they will try again to execute Pike. They have also not offered an explanation for what went wrong.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the rest of the year – and the head of prisons in the state said over the weekend that he plans to resign.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens.
Dr Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s defence team, said the two doses of pentobarbital she received last week would have been enough that, had it entered her bloodstream in normal circulation, “she would have surely died”.
Instead, Zivot said a possible explanation is that instead of entering Pike’s bloodstream, the pentobarbital was more likely to have spread across the tissue under her skin.
Zivot said it a brain injury is “very possible”, since resuscitation efforts were not undertaken right away. But it would take “at least a week” for the amount of pentobarbital in Pike’s system to dissipate and enable “a good neurologic examination”, he said last week.
“Even with all available interventions, her survival prospects remain uncertain,” he had said. Zivot added that it is likely she would have “serious medical conditions that could significantly change” how she lives.
The BBC has contacted Zivot for further thoughts after Pike regained consciousness.
Pike’s lawyers previously warned that her medical history and anatomy – including thrombocytosis (a blood-clotting condition) and small veins – meant there was a risk she would experience “unnecessary” pain and suffering during a lethal injection.
They said on Tuesday that she has endured “severe damage” to her arms.
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