Six days after Tennessee failed to execute her, Christa Pike is conscious and speaking, her attorneys said Tuesday.
Pike survived two complete rounds of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital on September 30, a medically unprecedented outcome. No one had ever survived the administration of lethal injection drugs before, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Her attorneys say her arms were left swollen, burned and blistered, and that she is still handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed while receiving critical care.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. She was to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. Slemmer’s mother waited years for the execution and was at the prison the night it failed.
A court hearing is scheduled for this morning at 11. Her attorneys asked the court to order the state to preserve evidence from the failed execution, and they are calling on Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole. The fallout already cost the state’s prison chief his job last week.
See also: Tennessee’s Prison Chief Just Resigned After Christa Pike Survived Two Lethal Injections | Tennessee Prison Chief Resigns After Botched Execution Left Christa Pike On A Ventilator
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