Christa Pike is conscious and speaking after failed execution, lawyers say

Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who last week survived two rounds of a lethal injection, is conscious and speaking, her lawyers said Wednesday, as they seek to establish what caused her botched execution.

“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,” lawyers for Pike said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.

The 50-year-old’s prognosis remains unclear and, at a minimum, she faces a lengthy recovery, her lawyers added, noting that her arms were burned and blistered from at least seven IV needles used during the execution attempt. She is handcuffed to her hospital bed, they said.

Pike’s lawyers are seeking a court order requiring the state’s prison system to protect and preserve data from the failed execution procedure, including drug lot numbers, needles, execution logs and other records. They are set to appear in court Wednesday to request more information from the Tennessee Department of Correction.

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Lawyers for the Tennessee attorney general’s office wrote in a court filing Tuesday that the court order is unnecessary because the prison system is “obliged to maintain this evidence in other cases and must assure it is preserved.”

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They said state officials have taken “the necessary steps to obtain medical care for Pike and ascertain what occurred.”

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced last week that he had ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that a remaining state execution scheduled for this year will not take place.

Medical and lethal injection experts have theorized about the possibility that a faulty IV line caused the drug —pentobarbital— to disseminate in her tissue rather than enter her bloodstream.

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Pike’s lawyers wrote in their court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown.”

They also referred to prior difficulties with blood draws and needle insertions, as well as concerns expressed by Pike nine months ago, where she warned that her individual physical characteristics, including thrombocytosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, and small veins, “make it sure or very likely that there is a substantial risk that she will experience unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace,” suggesting that her execution would result in “cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Tennessee and United States Constitutions.”

Pike had argued that the execution protocols were unconstitutional because they did not account for the provision of medical care, or the resuscitation of a prisoner in the event of a failed execution.

Her concerns were “laughed off, scoffed at, and dismissed,” the court filing says.

The update on her health comes a week after it was reported that the execution had failed and that she could be heard wailing and complaining of pain and pressure in her arm by witnesses to the procedure.

After receiving the drugs, she was taken by ambulance to a Tennessee hospital.

Pike was sentenced to death for a murder she committed at 18 and would have been the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years.

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A Tennessee appeals court initially halted the lethal injection an hour before it was scheduled to begin on Sept. 30; later in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay, permitting the execution to go ahead.