Christa Pike’s attorneys say she faces a “long road” to recovery after surviving a failed execution in Tennessee.
During a press conference on Oct. 7, her legal team outlined several serious medical complications Pike is experiencing.
“She has a blood clot in one of her arms. She has pneumonia. She is not able to swallow yet, so she has not eaten,” attorney Randy Spivey said during the press conference, which was streamed by NBC News. “She cannot move either of her arms. Both of her arms and hands are tremendously swollen. And we do not know what, if any, function she will regain in her arms. But we do know that there’s a long road ahead.”
The attorneys spoke after a court hearing in which they asked a judge to require Tennessee officials to preserve all evidence connected to Pike’s botched execution.
The state opposed the request, saying the Tennessee Department of Correction was already preserving the evidence—an argument Chancellor I’Ashea L. Myles cited when she ruled against Pike’s legal team.
“The state will have no problem doing this, because you all are already doing that,” Myles said. “To any extent that any information or any evidence has already been discarded, deleted, destroyed, or no longer exists, I want TDOC to take an affirmative step, to try to claw back that information.”
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The judge ordered officials to preserve all relevant material, including IV lines and needles, medical supplies, medical records, drugs used during the execution and information from their manufacturer, photographs, video recordings, handwritten notes, checklists and witness accounts.
“Today’s hearing was just a first step of many to preserve and enforce Christa’s constitutional rights after this unprecedented botched execution,” Pike attorney Luke Ihnen said. “As I said repeatedly, we have not asked the state to turn over any evidence at this point, only demanding that they preserve it so that her lawyers, experts, and the public can learn what really happened Wednesday night.”
Pike was convicted in the brutal 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. She survived after Tennessee officials administered two lethal doses of pentobarbital.
She regained consciousness on Tuesday, Oct. 6, almost a week after the execution attempt failed.
“On Monday night, it was our understanding that Christa was brain dead and that life support would be removed the next day,” Spivey said after the hearing. “But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking.”
Pike’s attorneys say they will continue urging Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It remains unclear whether, or when, her execution could be rescheduled. Following the incident, Lee paused all executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year.