NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Christa Pike is \u201cangry and confused\u201d after regaining consciousness almost six days after Tennessee\u2019s failed attempt to execute her, one of her attorneys said Wednesday after a judge told the state to preserve evidence related to Pike\u2019s case.<\/i><\/p>\n
Pike, 50, survived even after executioners tried to give her two lethal<\/strong><\/p>\n doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is angry and confused about everything right now. \u2026 She is very aware of what they did to her up to a point,\u201d Randy Spivey said during a news conference.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning but I do know she has a long road to recovery,\u201d Spivey said.<\/p>\n Luke Ihnen attorney for Christa Pike speaks during a court hearing Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn., requesting the Tennessee Department of Corrections to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution of Pike. (AP Photo\/George \u2026 The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the only person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.<\/p>\n At a hearing Wednesday in Nashville, Pike\u2019s attorneys asked the court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to save evidence in the case and provide more information about what went wrong. A judge ordered the state to preserve \u201canything that was in the actual room.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the issue that we are facing is up until yesterday, our client was unconscious, unable to communicate with counsel, unable to communicate with medical providers, and without her consent\u201d a new lawsuit cannot be filed, Luke Ihnen, a federal public defender, told the court.<\/p>\n This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)<\/p>\n Her legal team said Tuesday that Pike\u2019s prognosis remains unclear and, at a minimum, she faces a lengthy recovery. Her arms were burned and blistered after the attempted lethal injection and she is handcuffed to the hospital bed, they said.<\/p>\n The failed execution has renewed scrutiny of how states carry out the death penalty, in particular the use of lethal injection. Texas was set to carry out Wednesday the first execution in the U.S. since Tennessee attempted to put Pike to death.<\/p>\n Christa Pike\u2019s attorneys want evidence preserved<\/strong><\/p>\n Pike\u2019s attorneys wanted a court order to require the prison system to preserve information from the attempted execution, including drug lot numbers, needles, execution logs and other information.<\/p>\n Chancery Court Judge I\u2019Ashea Myles indicated that her order to save the evidence would be sweeping, saying the state should maintain recordings, witness accounts, emails along with drugs, syringes, IV lines and other medical items.<\/p>\n The Tennessee Attorney General\u2019s Office said a court order was unnecessary. John W. Ayers, assistant attorney general, said evidence from the death chamber already had been collected and logged.<\/p>\n Republican Gov. Bill Lee has called what happened \u201cdeeply disturbing\u201d and ordered a \u201ccomprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.\u201d The governor postponed the state\u2019s only other execution scheduled for this year.<\/p>\n The state\u2019s prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution.<\/p>\n Christa Pike\u2019s recovery remains uncertain<\/p>\n Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on the possibility that a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue rather than entering her bloodstream. Pike\u2019s attorneys wrote in their court filing that \u201capparently 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The attempted execution got underway around 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 30 when Pike was given a chance to make a final statement. About five minutes later, Pike raised her head and said her arm was hurting. At some point she appeared to lose consciousness, but she could be heard audibly breathing until media were escorted from the witness room at 8:53 p.m. An ambulance arrived at the prison at 9:14 p.m. to take Pike to a hospital.<\/p>\n Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike\u2019s legal team, said it could be weeks or months before anyone knows exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored so the state can try again to execute her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Christa Pike is \u201cangry and confused\u201d after regaining consciousness almost six days after Tennessee\u2019s failed attempt to execute her, one of her attorneys said Wednesday after … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/80"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usbrief.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}