Christa Pike has regained consciousness and begun speaking after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyer said, as a judge ordered the state to preserve evidence from the procedure.
Randy Spivey told reporters on 7 October that he believed Pike’s first words on waking were: “Where am I and who are you?” He said he had not been in the room at the time, according to ABC News.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital during a single execution attempt on 30 September in Nashville, her attorneys said. She was subsequently hospitalised and placed on a ventilator.
Spivey said her legal team had feared she would not recover before she unexpectedly began talking. ABC News reported that he described her as confused and said she faced a lengthy recovery.
She had pneumonia, a blood clot in one arm and severe swelling in her arms and hands, according to Spivey. He said it remained unclear how much function she would regain in her arms.
At a hearing on 7 October, Davidson County Chancery Court judge I’Ashea Myles granted a request to preserve physical, written and electronic evidence connected to the execution attempt, ABC News reported.
The order covers drugs, syringes, intravenous lines, recordings, photographs, notes and communications. Myles also directed the Tennessee Department of Correction to try to recover information that had already been discarded or deleted.
Assistant state attorney general Will Ayers told the court that materials collected from the execution chamber had been logged into a preservation room, according to ABC News. He said some intravenous equipment might have remained attached to Pike when she was taken to hospital.
The department said in a statement issued on 30 September that it had followed every step of the state’s established execution protocol. It said the protocol permitted no further procedures beyond those carried out that evening and confirmed Pike’s transfer to a medical facility.
Governor Bill Lee has paused scheduled executions and appointed former US attorney Ed Stanton to review the failed procedure, the Associated Press reported.
Pike was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995, according to ABC News. Her lawyers are asking Lee to commute the sentence to life imprisonment without parole.
Asked at the hearing whether Pike’s execution would be rescheduled, Ayers said he was not in a position to answer, ABC News reported.
