Christa Pike has been released following a failed execution attempt.
Her legal team, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the TN Office of the Post Conviction Defender, issued this statement on Oct. 10:
"Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years. 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
Oct. 8 that she'd been able to walk, despite spending days in the hospital unconscious and intubated following her failed execution attempt on Sept. 30.
Pike's attorneys remain concerned about psychological damage and lasting impacts to her cognitive functioning.
The attorneys reported they were allowed to visit with her for the first time after she regained consciousness on Oct. 6. That was after they were already told by medical professionals on Oct. 5 there was a possibility she was brain-dead and would need to be taken off life support.
On Oct. 7, they shared she was confused and angry, still badly bruised on her arms, and had pneumonia and a blood clot.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. The day of her planned execution, last-minute legal battle threw off the schedule of the day. After the execution was allowed to resume, Pike was given two lethal rounds of pentobarbital, which she survived.
Emergency vehicles arrived as witnesses were describing what they saw and heard during the execution attempt.
Gov. Bill Lee is now ordering a third-party review of what went wrong and has paused the other execution scheduled for this year. Gary Wayne Sutton had been scheduled for execution Dec. 3.
The Tennessee Department of Correction, which handled the failed execution, said it did everything right.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Christa Pike has been released from the hospital
