Christa Pike’s first words after botched execution revealed
Lawyers have given an update into death row inmate Christa Pike’s first words as she continues to recover from a failed execution.
Source: Fox True Crime
Lawyers have revealed what an “angry and confused” Christa Pike said when she woke up shackled to her hospital bed and with a tube down her throat after her botched execution.
Pike, 50, regained consciousness in Nashville on Tuesday (US time) after surviving two doses of pentobarbital in a botched execution, in what her lawyers said was a “medically unprecedented” awakening.
Pike is believed to be the only person to survive in the US after having lethal injection drugs administered.
Her lawyer Randy Spivey said it was a “shock to everyone” when she came to. Her first question was: “Where am I and who are you?”
“On Tuesday, to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team, and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking,” Spivey said.
“She is angry and confused about everything right now.
“She is very aware that the state tried to execute her.”
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Doctor Joel Zivot, an anaesthetist who was an expert medical witness for Pike’s defence, told People she knew her name but wrongly guessed the date, which was “forgivable under the circumstances”.
“Her memories may continue to evolve,” he said. “I think she knew who she was, where she was, when she was told.”
Zivot told People he believed issues with Pike’s IV lines may explain how she survived.
“I think it’s because her intravenouses just blew very quickly, and so only a very small portion of the pentobarbital made it into the central circulation into the brain … the rest of it was deposited into the soft tissue of her arms,” he said.
Pike’s lawyers said her recovery was “medically unprecedented”, but her long-term prognosis was still unclear.
She could not swallow or eat, had pneumonia, could not move her “tremendously swollen” hands or arms and it was unclear if she would regain her lost mobility, they said.
Although she still has “cognitive confusion”, the lawyers said, Pike has been speaking with those around her.
“She has wanted to know what’s happened and she’s asked about several people,” Spivey said.
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“She’s asked about the victim’s family.”
They said Pike’s arms were burned and blistered after the attempted lethal injection and that she was handcuffed to the hospital bed.
Her lawyers appeared in court Wednesday (US time) seeking a court order to require the prison system to preserve information from the attempted execution.
They secured a legal win when the judge ordered the state of Tennessee to preserve the broadest amount of evidence possible from Pike’s failed execution. That includes IVs, syringes and medical documents, and communications and surveillance video.
The all-female execution team requested by Pike used at least seven needles during a gruelling ordeal that lasted more than two hours, and one needle was bent 90 degrees when it was pulled out, her lawyers said.
Judge I’Ashea Myles largely sided with Pike’s lawyers at the end of Wednesday’s hearing, describing the litigation, which began in January to try to prevent the scheduled execution, as unusual because no one had anticipated Pike surviving.
“This case is unique, to say the least,” Myles said.
She has yet to rule on a request by Pike’s lawyers that the Tennessee Department of Correction let them take any residual traces of the execution drugs for chemical analysis.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has opposed what it says is a “duplicative and unnecessary” preservation order. It argues it is already legally required to preserve all evidence and that it was already willing to share most, if not all, of what Pike’s lawyers sought.
“Today’s hearing was about transparency, about why Christa, the courts, the media and the public should not simply take the state’s word about what happened last Wednesday,” Luke Ihnen, another lawyer for Pike, said after the ruling.
He repeated the demand that the Tennessee governor commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison and never try to execute her again.
Pike was sentenced to death for her role as a teenager in the 1995 torture and murder of her 19-year-old schoolmate Colleen Slemmer.
-with AAP
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