The legal team for Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike appeared in court Oct. 7 and demanded easier access to their client who remains hospitalized after her botched execution.
Pike's attorney Luke Ihnen said in court that her lawyers had to wait for over two and half hours in the lobby of the hospital to see Pike on Oct. 6 due to "obstacles" in the process. Ihnen also asked the court to provide Pike a tablet, which she would have had access to during her incarceration, but said it's unclear whether she can currently use a tablet.
Pike is "speaking limitedly," according to Ihnen, but her attorneys were unable to get her consent to bring a new lawsuit. The latest glimpse into Pike's condition comes one day afterher legal team announced that
she was conscious and talking in the hospital.
Tennessee attempted to execute Pike, 50, by lethal injection on Sept. 30 for the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital injections and was taken to a Nashville-area hospital.
Pike remained intubated, on a ventilator and unconscious for days after the botched execution. Her attorneys said on Oct. 6 that she suffered "severe damage" to her arms and "her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery."
Pike appears to be the first person known to have survived after execution drugs entered her body, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
Her attorneys have said they believe that Pike's IV lines were improperly placed or that Pike's veins had blown, causing some or all of the pentobarbital to enter her arm rather than her bloodstream. The state has not said why Pike's execution failed and the Tennessee Department of Correction did not respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.
Christa Pike's legal team fights to preserve evidence of botched execution
Pike's attorneys appeared in court on Oct. 7 as they seek topreserve evidence from Pike's failed execution.
Pike's legal team filed an emergency motion on Oct. 2 outlining what kind of evidence they want saved. The list included medical materials used in the execution attempt, surveillance footage, training and employment records of the IV team, communications regarding the decision to call for emergency medical care, and more.
Attorneys are also asking to be granted access to Pike to independently document her medical condition.
In a response to the emergency motion from Pike's attorneys, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argued the request should be dismissed, in part because the corrections department is already broadly obligated to preserve evidence in cases like this.
The response, filed around 5 p.m. on Oct. 6, also argued the evidence requested by attorneys is not relevant in the corresponding lawsuit, which was originally filed in January to challenge the constitutionality of the state's lethal injection protocol. The response calls Pike's motion "duplicative and unnecessary."
Will Tennessee try to execute Christa Pike again?
Pike's attorneys have repeatedly called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Lee has ordered an investigation into what went wrong, called off the state's only remaining lethal injection this year and announced the upcoming resignation of Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada.
But the governor's office has not responded to USA TODAY's repeated request for comment or questions about whether Lee will grant a commutation.
A second execution attempt would "likely be unconstitutional," according to Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take a stance on the death penalty. But it has been decades since the U.S. Supreme Court has had to rule on such an issue, leaving Pike in "uncharted territory," Maher said.
“These are questions that have never needed to be asked before and no one knows the answers," she said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Christa Pike is 'speaking limitedly' as legal team fights for access
