Christa Pike is “up and walking” in hospital after surviving an execution attempt in the US state of Tennessee, a member of her legal team has said, according to the Daily Mirror and Hiru News, both carrying a BBC report.
Pike, 50, survived two lethal injections on 30 September. Experts have described the outcome as unprecedented: she is believed to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt by lethal injection.
Lawyer Stephen Ferrell, speaking late on Wednesday to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said he had not spoken to Pike directly but had learned she was moving around her hospital room for the first time, while remaining mentally “foggy”. He said she was still experiencing the after-effects of pentobarbital, the drug injected in two doses.
Earlier updates from her team had described her as awake and speaking but angry and confused, and handcuffed to her bed.
A court order on the evidence
A court has ordered the state of Tennessee to preserve all evidence relating to the failed execution. That material could form the basis of a future lawsuit against the state.
The case
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, who was 19. Pike was 18 at the time and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17; the two had met Slemmer at a job training camp for troubled teenagers. Shipp was spared the death penalty because he was not legally an adult when the crime was committed, and remains in prison.
Slemmer’s mother, who had pushed for the execution to go ahead, called the failed attempt a “mess”.
Not reported: neither filing says what went wrong with the injections, which court issued the evidence-preservation order, or whether Tennessee intends to attempt the execution again. Neither carries comment from the state or its department of correction, and neither gives a prognosis for Pike’s recovery. Both outlets carry the same BBC copy rather than independent reporting.
