Christa Pike is now able to walk, her attorneys said Oct. 8, 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.
The attorneys' most recent update says Pike is walking with some
assistance and her arms are healing and "regaining movement and strength." Her lungs are clear and she has started to eat a regular diet, her attorneys said.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. She was scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. on September 30, but a last-minute legal battle threw off the schedule of the day. After the execution was allowed to resume, Pike was subjected to two lethal rounds of pentobarbital before she was taken to a Nashville-area hospital in an ambulance.
"It was a mess," Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, told NBC News. “They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die.”
Pike's failed execution led to the resignation of the commissioner of the state's corrections department. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a third-party review of what went wrong.
Representatives of Lee have not responded to repeated requests for comment on whether he will commute Pike's death sentence.
"Christa is dealing with the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution, including the terror, pain and uncertainty of believing she was about to die," said Pike's attorneys, including Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender and Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee.
Have questions about the justice system? Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him with questions, tips or story ideas at emealins@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Christa Pike up and walking one week after failed execution
