{"id":620732,"date":"2026-10-04T23:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T23:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/620732\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T23:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T23:00:12","slug":"christa-pike-has-not-regained-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/620732\/","title":{"rendered":"Christa Pike has not regained consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said.<\/p>\n

Little has been released about Pike’s condition since last week’s execution attempt<\/a>. She has since remained hospitalised under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system.<\/p>\n

When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike\u2019s lawyer, said on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d: \u201cNot that I am aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Media<\/p>\n

Media witnesses recount the moments before the execution of Christa Pike was halted (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Lawyer says Pike’s medical decisions are being decided by someone else<\/p>\n

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage in 1995. She became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.<\/p>\n

Tennessee prison officials gave Pike two doses of the lethal injection drug. The pentobarbital didn’t kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were burned and blistered from the caustic drugs.<\/p>\n

Pike gave someone her medical power of attorney and that person is protecting her privacy, Ferrell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not sure what all they may have told that person,\u201d Ferrell said.<\/p>\n

Pike’s attorneys have not identified who is making Pike’s medical decisions. They said they may not know for several more days whether or not she can recover.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know right now, and we may never know what sort of torture she endured during that process, where her consciousness was, what physical pain there was \u2014 what mental torture she went through,\u201d Ferrell said.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Pike’s defense team said in a statement that \u201cwe appreciate all respect for Christa\u2019s rightful privacy”.<\/p>\n

Pike’s lawyer says Tennessee needs to be more open about executions<\/p>\n

Pike’s execution was delayed for more than eight hours as the US Supreme Court considered, and ultimately overturned, a federal appeals court ruling to halt her lethal injection so judges could thoroughly review whether the jury that sentenced her to death should have considered sexual abuse she said she suffered as a child.<\/p>\n

Her attorneys asked a court to order Tennessee prison officials to preserve any written records, communication, images or video from the execution.<\/p>\n

Tennessee, like many other states with capital punishment, keeps many details about executions secret from the people involved to details about how the drugs are manufactured or obtained or any tests done on their quality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state of Tennessee has got to start telling its people exactly what it is doing so that in the democratic process, the people of Tennessee can decide if that\u2019s what they want to be done in their name,\u201d Ferrell told CNN.<\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Willis questions Labour\u2019s commitments, and two people are hospitalised after a West Auckland incident. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n

Tennessee has struggled with executions before<\/p>\n

This was the second time this year Tennessee has not been able to execute a prisoner who was seemingly moments away from death. In May, Tennessee stopped the execution of Tony Carruthers after staff placed an IV into his right arm but couldn\u2019t get a secondary IV line.<\/p>\n

Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction Frank Strada announced Sunday<\/a> he was resigning.<\/p>\n

Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent investigation into the state’s capital punishment system conducted by former US Attorney Ed Stanton. He also reviewed Tennessee’s execution procedures after Lee called off a different execution in 2022 and found the state did not comply with its own lethal injection process.<\/p>\n

Prison officials and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office have said little since Pike was taken to the hospital.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This undated photo provided by May Martinez shows her daughter, Colleen Slemmer, who was murdered in 1995 in Tennessee. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Future of Pike’s death penalty case is unclear<\/p>\n

It is unclear what will happen in her death penalty case. Pike’s lawyers have asked the governor to commute her punishment to a life sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf she recovers, she may not fully recover. And there may be issues about her competence,\u201d Ferrell said.<\/p>\n

Pike didn\u2019t deny she killed<\/a> 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The two were classmates at Knoxville Job Corps.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. The case got widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim\u2019s body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,134,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-620732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}