Christa Pike, Tennessee death row inmate conscious & speaking after botched execution as lawyers issue statement that her recovery is medically unprecedented amid ongoing debate surrounding capital punishment.
Christa Pike, 50, the Tennessee inmate who survived that state’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys announced on Tuesday.
‘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,’ attorneys for Pike said in a statement.
Her attorneys said they are grateful for the first responders and the medical team at the hospital ‘who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her.’
Cruel and unusual punishment
The statement was the first indication that Pike has improved since an ambulance carried her away from a Nashville prison last Wednesday.
Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital as Tennessee officials attempted to put her to death.
Speaking to media, multiple witnesses from the execution chamber said ‘nothing we saw was normal’.
They noted the process was ‘abnormally long’, with the curtain being drawn at multiple points throughout the lethal injection being administered.
In the immediate aftermath, Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion to the Supreme Court asking for an immediate halt to further execution attempts saying Pike was in ‘unnecessary agony.’
In their motion, lawyers states Pike was in ‘unnecessary agony’ and that the attempt at capital punishment was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment.
Capital punishment turmoil and dilemma
The botched execution led to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, announcing all executions in that state would be cancelled for the balance of the year. The head of prisons in the state said over the weekend that he plans to resign.
The incident has since further engendered discussion surrounding capital punishment, its efficacy, moral and ethical considerations and how states who do carry them out will continue to exact them amid calls for ‘retribution’ and ‘closure’ for egregious crimes.
Since 1976, a total of 18 women have been put to death in the United States. Pike was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. Had she been executed, she would’ve been the first woman to be legally put to death in Tennessee in 200 years.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens in 1995.
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