Christa Pike Back in Prison After Botched Tennessee Execution
(MENAFN) Christa Pike, the Tennessee inmate who survived a botched lethal injection last month, has been released from the hospital and returned to prison, her attorneys confirmed Saturday.
She was taken back to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, where she was held ahead of her scheduled Sept. 30 execution, a broadcaster reported.
“Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years,” her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement Saturday.
The statement went on: “She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”
Pike, 50, was given two doses of a lethal injection drug meant to end her life. Her legal team said soon afterward that the procedure had failed, that she had survived and that she was being treated at a hospital. On Tuesday, her attorneys said she had regained consciousness and could speak from her hospital bed.
By Wednesday, her legal team said, she had begun “taking limited steps” with assistance. The next day, her attorneys reported further progress, saying she was walking “with some assistance” and that her arms were “healing and regaining movement and strength.” They added that her “lungs are clear, and she has started to eat a regular diet.”
Pike was convicted in 1995 of the killing of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Court documents state that Pike, then 18, tortured and murdered Slemmer in a wooded area of the University of Tennessee campus.
She was taken back to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, where she was held ahead of her scheduled Sept. 30 execution, a broadcaster reported.
“Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years,” her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement Saturday.
The statement went on: “She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”
Pike, 50, was given two doses of a lethal injection drug meant to end her life. Her legal team said soon afterward that the procedure had failed, that she had survived and that she was being treated at a hospital. On Tuesday, her attorneys said she had regained consciousness and could speak from her hospital bed.
By Wednesday, her legal team said, she had begun “taking limited steps” with assistance. The next day, her attorneys reported further progress, saying she was walking “with some assistance” and that her arms were “healing and regaining movement and strength.” They added that her “lungs are clear, and she has started to eat a regular diet.”
Pike was convicted in 1995 of the killing of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Court documents state that Pike, then 18, tortured and murdered Slemmer in a wooded area of the University of Tennessee campus.
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