Christa Pike’s attorney says she may never fully recover after surviving a botched lethal injection in Tennessee.
Stephen Ferrell, one of Pike’s lawyers, said’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that the 50-year-old remains unconscious and on a ventilator in a guarded hospital room following the failed execution last Wednesday. Pike has not regained consciousness or spoken since the procedure at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
“We don’t know right now, and we may never know, what sort of torture she endured during that process,” Ferrell said on CNN.
Pike became the first woman sentenced to death by Tennessee in more than two centuries, and the first death row inmate known to survive a successful injection of pentobarbital. Witnesses reported she was snoring and unconscious but still breathing while strapped to the gurney after two rounds of the drug were administered.
Her prognosis remains deeply uncertain. “We don’t really know the prognosis yet and may not know for several days,” Ferrell shared. “It remains to be seen what the future is.”
The attorney added that Pike’s legal team has been blocked from visiting her in the hospital where she is being kept under guard. “I think one of the main things that will leave this up in the air for a while is the fact that we don’t know what the prognosis is — as in, the long-term prognosis. If she recovers — she may not fully recover.”
“And there may be issues about her competence. We just don’t know any of this,” he continued.
Ferrell has formally requested that Tennessee Governor Bill Lee commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison in light of the failed execution.
The botched procedure has already claimed one high-profile casualty: state prison chief Frank Strada resigned in the fallout. The case also drew comment from President Donald Trump, who expressed bafflement at the failed execution.
Legal experts say a second attempt appears unlikely unless Pike makes a complete recovery. “She can’t be executed if she is brain injured and doesn’t understand the proceedings,” said Professor Deborah Denno of the Fordham School of Law.
Denno pointed to a 2019 United States Supreme Court ruling involving a dementia patient that established defendants must be aware of the punishment they are to receive. “The United States Supreme Court recognized in a case involving a dementia patient in 2019 that you can’t execute someone who’s not aware of the punishment that they’re going to receive,” she explained.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, whom she killed in a jealous rage. The crime occurred in 1995, and Pike has spent nearly three decades on death row awaiting execution.