Christa Pike is ‘speaking limitedly’ after being declared brain dead before waking up after failed execution, attorney says

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP/Gray News) — Christa Pike was declared brain dead on Monday night and was expected to be taken off life support, but woke up and started talking on Tuesday, according to her attorneys.

An attorney said in a press conference on Wednesday that while he was not there when she woke up Tuesday, he believes she asked medical staff who they were and where she was.

According to her attorneys, she has a blood clot, cannot swallow and has not eaten. Her arms and hands are swollen and it is unknown at this time if she will regain function in her arms. They also said she has pneumonia.

“The swelling was extraordinary,” one of her attorneys said.

An attorney said that while Pike has a lot of “cognitive confusion,” she is aware of her failed execution.

Pike’s feet and right arm are shackled to her hospital bed. Medical staff and her attorneys have asked for some of the restrains to be removed, according to her legal team.

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Christa Pike regained consciousness roughly six days after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her and was “speaking limitedly,” one of her attorneys said during a court hearing Wednesday.

Pike, 50, survived even after executioners tried to give her two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the only person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.

At a hearing Wednesday in Nashville, Pike’s attorneys asked the court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to save evidence in the case and provide more information about what went wrong. A judge ordered the state to preserve “anything that was in the actual room.”

“Part of the issue that we are facing is up until yesterday, our client was unconscious, unable to communicate with counsel, unable to communicate with medical providers, and without her consent” a new lawsuit cannot be filed, Luke Ihnen, a federal public defender, told the court.

Her legal team said Tuesday that Pike’s prognosis remains unclear and, at a minimum, she faces a lengthy recovery. Her arms were burned and blistered after the attempted lethal injection and she is handcuffed to the hospital bed, they said.

The failed execution has renewed scrutiny of how states carry out the death penalty, in particular the use of lethal injection. Texas was set to carry out Wednesday the first execution in the U.S. since Tennessee attempted to put Pike to death.

Christa Pike’s attorneys want evidence preserved

Pike’s attorneys wanted a court order to require the prison system to preserve information from the attempted execution, including drug lot numbers, needles, execution logs and other information.

Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles indicated that her order to save the evidence would be sweeping, saying the state should maintain recordings, witness accounts, emails along with drugs, syringes, IV lines and other medical items.

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office said a court order was unnecessary. John W. Ayers, assistant attorney general, said evidence from the death chamber already had been collected and logged.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee has called what happened “deeply disturbing” and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” The governor postponed the state’s only other execution scheduled for this year.

The state’s prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution.

Christa Pike’s recovery remains uncertain

Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on the possibility that a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue rather than entering her bloodstream. Pike’s attorneys wrote in their court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown.”

The attempted execution got underway around 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 30 when Pike was given a chance to make a final statement. About five minutes later, Pike raised her head and said her arm was hurting. At some point she appeared to lose consciousness, but she could be heard audibly breathing until media were escorted from the witness room at 8:53 p.m. An ambulance arrived at the prison at 9:14 p.m. to take Pike to a hospital.

Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike’s legal team, said it could be weeks or months before anyone knows exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored so the state can try again to execute her.

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Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit and John Seewer, in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.