Murderer who survived death penalty walks in hospital room but is still 'brainless'

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Christa Pike (50), a death row inmate who survived an execution in the southern US state of Tennessee, is walking around her hospital room but is mentally "groggy," her lawyer said in an interview aired on the 8th.

Despite being given two doses of the anesthetic pentobarbital on the night of September 30th, Pike did not die and was considered brain dead.

According to his lawyer, doctors had planned to remove him from life support on the 6th, but the death row inmate unexpectedly woke up and started talking.

Her lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, told the BBC: "Today she is standing up and walking for the first time, but only within her room and cannot go very far."

"I'm also somewhat lightheaded. I get interrupted very easily and forget where I was going."

He further added, ``There is a possibility that there may be aftereffects.It is not known yet.''

Ferrell himself has not personally met or spoken to Pike, but has received reports from colleagues who have.

Defense attorneys renewed their request to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute Pike's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The botched execution prompted Governor Lee to suspend executions in the state until an independent third-party investigation was completed, and the state's corrections director was forced to resign.

It is not known whether Tennessee will ultimately try to put Pike on death row again.

"We're really in uncharted waters," Ferrell said.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), Pike is the only inmate on death row to survive after being given a lethal dose of the execution drug.

In 1995, when Pike was 18 years old, he and his boyfriend beat to death Colleen Slemer, a 19-year-old female co-worker at a youth vocational training facility.

The incident attracted national attention because Slemer's body had a pentagram, a symbol of Satanism and Satanism, carved into his chest.

According to DPIC, only 18 female death row inmates have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.