{"id":924987,"date":"2026-10-08T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T07:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924987\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T07:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T07:00:17","slug":"christa-pike-was-nearly-taken-off-life-support-before-waking-lawyers-say-death-penalty-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924987\/","title":{"rendered":"Christa Pike was nearly taken off life support before waking, lawyers say | Death Penalty News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for Christa Pike<\/a>, the Tennessee woman who survived a botched execution attempt, have said that their client was nearly disconnected from life support before she awoke this week in a United States hospital.<\/p>\n

In a news conference on Wednesday, Randy Spivey, who represents Pike, described her as feeling \u201cangry and confused\u201d about what happened.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

\u201cMonday night, our understanding was that Christa was brain dead, and life support would be removed the next day,\u201d Spivey told reporters.<\/p>\n

But on Tuesday, he said, \u201cChrista woke up and began talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spivey added that Pike did not seem to recall the execution attempt itself. Upon waking<\/a> up in her hospital room in Nashville, she reportedly asked those in the room, \u201cWhere am I?\u201d and \u201cWho are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Pike had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 30. But after receiving two doses of pentobarbital, she remained alive, becoming the first person believed to have survived such an injection in the US.<\/p>\n

The incident has renewed questions about the use of the death penalty in the country and its legality.<\/p>\n

Critics have long called such procedures a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits \u201ccruel and unusual punishments\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prior to her execution date, Pike\u2019s lawyers had also sought to have her sentence commuted, citing concerns about her mental health. She had been convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for participating in the murder of a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, her legal team described her as cooperating with Tennessee officials during the scheduled execution.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was kind and polite as they worked for an hour, stabbing her arm with needle after needle, and then she felt the burn of the pentobarbital,\u201d Spivey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then she woke up in a hospital surrounded by people she didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the lethal injections were meant to go into Pike\u2019s veins, experts have speculated that the pentobarbital instead pooled in the tissue of her arm. Her arms and hands remain heavily swollen and covered in blisters, Spivey added.<\/p>\n

It is unclear whether the state of Tennessee will attempt to execute Pike a second time.<\/p>\n

But Spivey has indicated he and Pike\u2019s other lawyers will once more seek to have her sentence commuted, based on the suffering she experienced during the botched execution.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, in anticipation of such legal proceedings, Nashville Judge I\u2019Ashea Myles ordered the state to save evidence from the execution attempt, including drugs, syringes and IV lines, as well as recordings and any communication records between officials.<\/p>\n

Since the execution attempt, Tennessee\u2019s Republican Governor Bill Lee has also ordered a halt to carrying out other death penalty sentences. Another execution had been scheduled in the state for later this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State\u2019s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,\u201d Lee said in a statement.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the botched execution, the state\u2019s top prison official, Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada, has announced he will resign<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n

Pike\u2019s lethal injection was not the only botched execution in Tennessee this year.<\/p>\n

Governor Lee granted a one-year reprieve to Tony Carruthers, whom officials attempted to execute in May 2026. But after an hour of trying, they could not find a vein to connect an IV for the pentobarbital, and the execution was suspended.<\/p>\n

Other states, however, have signalled they would proceed with carrying out death penalty cases despite the Tennessee incidents.<\/p>\n

A Texas court refused to halt the execution by pentobarbital of 46-year-old Jamaal Howard, scheduled for Wednesday, despite appeals from his lawyers citing Pike\u2019s botched execution.<\/p>\n

Those opposed to the death penalty have argued that such executions can cause unnecessary suffering. In Pike\u2019s case, she reportedly kicked a sheet off her body during the execution attempt and said she was feeling pain.<\/p>\n

Before her scheduled execution, Pike had warned authorities about the difficulty of finding veins in her arm and had even requested<\/a> to be executed by firing squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for Christa Pike, the Tennessee woman who survived a botched execution attempt, have said that their client…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2169,238873,893,43,37472,44,6711,41,39,42,40,772,1690],"class_list":["post-924987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime","tag-death-penalty","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-human-rights","tag-news","tag-prison","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}