Christa Pike is “up and walking” in hospital, her lawyer said, eight days after she survived two lethal injections during a botched execution in Tennessee.
The recovery marks a dramatic turnaround after Pike was declared brain dead on Monday, before waking up and beginning to speak on Tuesday. Her ordeal has shocked many in the US and overseas and galvanised critics of the death penalty.
Stephen Ferrell, a lawyer on Pike’s legal team, told the BBC that she was able to walk, but remained mentally foggy. “What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” Ferrell said.
“She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, not very far,” he added.
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Pike (50), was taken to hospital unconscious but alive from Tennessee’s execution chamber on September 30th, after receiving two doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital.
After the botched execution attempt, one of her lawyers called the process “cruel and torturous”, adding that he had counted seven needles in Pike’s left arm, “one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her”. Pike had lifted her head from the execution gurney to say her arms were burning as the drug was administered.
Pike’s team is seeking psychological support for her, given that “clearly is necessary now”, Ferrell said. On Wednesday, Pike was described as “angry and confused” after regaining consciousness.
Ferrell said of Pike’s mental state: “I think it’s kind of good and bad. Good that she is fairly with it, but she’s also somewhat foggy. She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.”
He said it remains to be seen whether Pike makes a full recovery.
“I assume [Pike’s condition] will keep improving, but there could be some permanent damage. We don’t know that yet.”
On Wednesday Randy Spivey, another attorney for Pike, said she was unable to move her arms and has pneumonia and a blood clot. Despite her condition, Pike was still being restrained, her team said, shackled to her hospital bed by her feet and right arm.
Pike’s lawyers had warned before the execution that officials might struggle to locate veins and cause her suffering in the process, but the state had pushed to proceed and the US supreme court allowed the prison to move forward.
There is speculation from medical experts that perhaps some or a lot of the drug missed her vein and went into tissue, that one of her veins, which were problematic and this fact flagged by her lawyers months earlier – blew, or that the drug was faulty, or a combination.
Pike was 18 and her then boyfriend 17 at the time when they killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, one of their classmates at Knoxville Job Corps, in Tennessee in 1995.
According to prosecutors, Pike was worried Slemmer was trying to take the boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, away from her. Together, they lured Slemmer into a wooded area, tortured and killed her.
Shipp was convicted of first-degree murder in 1997 and was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike has never denied her involvement in Slemmer’s killing. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder but, because she was 18, she was sentenced to death and has been on death row, isolated, for 30 years.
Pike’s attorneys have argued that her original legal team failed to present evidence about the sexual and physical abuse she suffered during childhood. Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, blocked Pike’s request for clemency. He has since halted the state’s remaining executions for the rest of the year and has ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred”. – Guardian
[ Keith Duggan: Life, death and a botched execution in TennesseeOpens in new window ]
