Christa Pike, the US execution survivor handcuffed in hospital

Christa Pike, the American woman who survived an execution in Tennessee, is "chained to her hospital bed, awake and able to talk a little". This was reported by her lawyer Luke Ihnen, specifying that the woman is currently handcuffed and with her ankles chained despite having suffered serious injuries to her arms, after two lethal injections of pentobarbital did not cause her death. Pike "regained consciousness yesterday and is speaking with difficulty," the lawyer added during a court hearing, reporting that she is "confused, angry and it is still not clear to her what happened to her on September 30th." Meanwhile, the medical staff's request to remove her handcuffs was "rejected."

The case of Christa Pike

Christa Pike, 50, had been sentenced to death for a murder committed as a teenager. During his execution he received two presumably lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital in a Tennessee prison. After surviving the injections, she was rushed to hospital, where she was initially in critical condition, unconscious and on a ventilator.

The conditions in the hospital

According to what an anesthesiologist said, the woman was taken off the ventilator. His prognosis "remains uncertain but we expect a long convalescence", his lawyers said then, asking Tennessee governor Bill Lee to commute the death sentence to life in prison. The court ordered state prison officials to preserve all evidence related to the botched execution, including medical materials, waste, and audio and video recordings. Pike's case has reignited the debate on capital punishment in the United States. Lee suspended executions in Tennessee pending an independent investigation and the director of the state prison system resigned. The Tennessee Department of Corrections maintained that it followed established protocol.

See also

Sentenced to death, Christa Pike regains consciousness after lethal dose