Christa Pike has been released from a Nashville hospital and returned to prison, her attorneys said Saturday, 10 days after she survived an attempted execution by the state of Tennessee.
On September 30, the Tennessee Department of Correction attempted to execute Pike by lethal injection for the 1995 torture and murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was administered two doses of pentobarbital, but both attempts were botched, prompting prison staff to provide emergency medical assistance.
Pike is now back at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, the state’s primary prison for women. As of Thursday, her lawyers said she had been walking with assistance but was still struggling with concentration and memory.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” her lawyers said in a statement. “She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”
The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed Pike had returned to the facility but declined to provide further details about her condition or treatment. The specific course of medical care she is receiving in prison has not been made public.
Pike’s attorneys are asking Gov. Bill Lee to grant clemency and commute her sentence to life in prison without parole. Pike has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, and her legal team cited those diagnoses in an earlier attempt to stay her execution. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state of Tennessee, and the execution was allowed to proceed, resulting in the botched procedure.
According to reporting on the case, Randy Spivey described Pike as expressing “overwhelming confusion over what happened, as well as worry about her loved ones and Ms. Slemmer’s family.”
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a crime for which a jury found her guilty and which was upheld through three subsequent appeals.
