Christa Pike was nearly taken off life support before waking, lawyers say

Death-row inmate who survived execution by lethal injection is said to be ‘angry and confused’ about what happened. Save Share Lawyers forChrista Pike, the Tennessee woman who survived a botched execution attempt, have said that their client was nearly disconnected from life support before she awoke this week in a United States hospital. In a news conference on Wednesday, Randy Spivey, who represents Pike, described her as feeling “angry and confused” about what happened. “Monday night, our understanding was that Christa was brain dead, and life support would be removed the next day,” Spivey told reporters. But on Tuesday, he said, “Christa woke up and began talking.” Spivey added that Pike did not seem to recall the execution attempt itself. Uponwakingup in her hospital room in Nashville, she reportedly asked those in the room, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” Pike had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 30. But after receiving two doses of pentobarbital, she remained alive, becoming the first person believed to have survived such an injection in the US. The incident has renewed questions about the use of the death penalty in the country and its legality. Critics have long called such procedures a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments”. Prior to her execution date, Pike’s lawyers had also sought to have her sentence commuted, citing concerns about her mental health. She had been convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for participating in the murder of a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. On Wednesday, her legal team described her as cooperating with Tennessee officials during the scheduled execution. “She was kind and polite as they worked for an hour, stabbing her arm with needle after needle, and then she felt the burn of the pentobarbital,” Spivey said. “And then she woke up in a hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know.” While the lethal injections were meant to go into Pike’s veins, experts have speculated that the pentobarbital instead pooled in the tissue of her arm. Her arms and hands remain heavily swollen and covered in blisters, Spivey added. It is unclear whether the state of Tennessee will attempt to execute Pike a second time. But Spivey has indicated he and Pike’s other lawyers will once more seek to have her sentence commuted, based on the suffering she experienced during the botched execution....