The woman who survived a botched execution in Tennessee remains unconscious and is critically ill with an unknown prognosis, her lawyer said Sunday.
Stephen Ferrell, the attorney for death row inmate Christa Pike, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he wants the governor to commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison.
She has been hospitalized since Wednesday after an attempted execution by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville failed.
People were interested in these podcasts
She remains on a ventilator at a local hospital and is undergoing a process to remove two doses of pentobarbital from her system.
“We don’t know the prognosis and may not know for several days,” Mr. Ferrell said.
Mr. Ferrell said he is unaware of her speaking or regaining consciousness and has not been allowed to see Pike.
If the state attempts to execute her again, he said, there could be legal issues related to her now-diminished competence following the botched execution.
“I think at the very least the governor should commute Ms. Pike’s death sentence to a life sentence,” Mr. Ferrell said. “We don’t know what her physical state will be, but it is clear that she has endured a torturous attempt at executing her and we had already asked the governor to commute her for many good reasons.”
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old Job Corps trainee. Pike also attempted to strangle a fellow inmate with a shoelace in 2001.
She was slated to become the first woman executed in the state in two centuries before surviving two injections of the typically lethal drug.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced he has halted the state’s one remaining execution planned for 2026 and ordered an independent review “to determine exactly what occurred.”
The head of the Tennessee Department of Correction resigned Saturday.
Slemmer’s mother, who traveled from Orange Park, Florida to witness the execution, said she broke down in tears after the two attempts to end Pike’s life failed.
“All I wanted was justice,” Martinez told WJXX in Jacksonville, Florida.
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.