Christa Pike Discharged From Hospital And Returned To Rehabilitation Centre

Death row inmate Christa Pike was discharged from a US hospital and returned to prison, where she will continue receiving medical care following a botched execution attempt in Tennessee, her lawyers said.

Pike was discharged from a local hospital and transferred back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Centre, where she has been held for more than 30 years, according to a joint statement from her legal team. The lawyers include Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen of Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason of the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for a murder committed in 1995, regained consciousness in hospital earlier this week, waking up “angry and confused”, her lawyers said on Wednesday. They said she faces a lengthy recovery after surviving the attempted execution on September 30. Her legal team had previously feared she might be brain-dead.

The 50-year-old was taken unconscious from the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to a hospital in Nashville. She was in a critical condition and had sustained severe injuries to her arms after two injections failed to kill her.

A Tennessee judge this week ordered state officials to preserve all evidence relating to the failed execution attempt. One of Pike’s lawyers described the ruling as the “first of many steps to preserve and enforce her constitutional rights”.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions in the state for the remainder of the year while investigators examine the failed attempt to execute Pike and a similar incident involving death row inmate Tony Carruthers in May. In Carruthers’ case, prison officials were unable to establish intravenous lines needed to carry out the execution.