Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row prisoner who survived a botched execution last week, is now up and walking as her surprise recovery continues, according to her lawyer.
Pike, 50, was sentenced to die for the “Satanic” murder of Knoxville classmate Colleen Slemmer in January 1995, only to be raced to a hospital after surviving a double dose of the deadly drug pentobarbital at Riverbend maximum security prison in Nashville on September 30.
Her legal team announced Tuesday she had woken up and begun talking and revealed Wednesday she had no memory of her ordeal and was “angry and confused” about what had happened to her.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program Thursday morning, attorney Stephen Farrell, said his client was doing “fairly well” but still has a long road ahead of her, with much still to be determined.
“What’s been described to me is that there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured, she’s unable to use them very much,” he said.
“She is up and walking for the first time today, just around the room, not very far. She’s back, she’s alive, we’re happy about that, but she’s not mentally fully recovered.
“She is fairly with it, but she’s also somewhat foggy and can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.”
Pike’s representatives won a legal victory Wednesday when Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles issued an order to the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve “anything that was in the actual room” when the state attempted to execute Pike for use as potential evidence in a future investigation into how it all went so badly wrong.
Judge Myles’s order required the state to maintain all recordings, witness accounts, emails, along with drugs, syringes, IV lines and any other medical items from the execution chamber.
Speaking to the press afterwards, Farrell’s colleague Randy Spivey offered more details about Pike’s recovery, saying she had asked, “Where am I and who are you?,” of the medical staff surrounding her bed when she first regained consciousness in hospital.
He explained that, as recently as Monday, he and his fellow lawyers understood the patient to be brain dead and expected her to be taken off life support the following day, only for her to wake up “to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team, and including the medical team.”
Spivey said Pike is currently experiencing “a lot of cognitive confusion” but is “very aware that the state tried to execute her.”
He added that she faced “a long road to recovery,” elaborating on her physical condition: “She has a blood clot in one of her arms. She has pneumonia. She is not able to swallow yet, so she is not eaten.
“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.”
Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee has suspended the state’s remaining execution scheduled for this year, called what happened to Pike “deeply disturbing” and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
Frank Strada, the state’s commissioner for the Department of Correction, has meanwhile announced his resignation as anti-death penalty activists call for Pike’s sentence to be commuted to life without the possibility of parole and for an end to capital punishment in the United States.
Dr Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiology expert advising Pike’s representatives, told The Independent Wednesday it “could take weeks” before the full extent of her cognitive condition becomes clear and stressed that she would need to recover her general physical strength.
“As a simple rule of thumb, I tell patients that one day in bed is one week of recovery,” he said.
“She has no doubt generalized muscle weakness... Many risks remain, and she could also decline in spite of this current improved state.”
