Christa Pike has been released from hospital 10 days after unbelievably surviving two execution attempts.
On September 30, two full syringes of pentobarbital were administered during her scheduled execution, which would have made her the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years.
Instead, she became the first person ever to survive two lethal injections.
As Pike, 50, remained alive with a heartbeat, she was heard snoring and gurgling on the chamber’s microphone shortly after the initial dose and a backup failed.
She was transported to a hospital in Nashville, where staff worked to save her life.
Having been placed on a ventilator, she was briefly declared brain dead after a period of unconsciousness but later woke up and began speaking, much to the shock of doctors and legal experts.
Her lawyers recalled her first words on Tuesday as, ‘Where am I?’ and ‘Who are you?’
Now, in a fresh update on Pike’s condition, her attorneys confirmed her discharge and return to prison, where she will continue receiving medical treatment.
While her recovery will be closely monitored, her legal team says it may take months to assess possible long-term cognitive effects.
As for exactly how she survived, there are several working theories, including that of her legal team, who believe problems with the IV lines caused the fatal drug to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.
What happens to Christa Pike next?
Pike’s attorneys called her recovery in hospital ‘medically unprecedented’.
She has been returned to the women’s prison where she’s been held for 30 years.
Her lawyers, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the Office of the Post Conviction Defender, released a statement.
They said: ‘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.
‘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.’
While Pike’s execution was put on indefinite hold, on Wednesday, Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Will Ayers told a court that he does not know whether it will be rescheduled.
The judge ordered the state to preserve all evidence related to the failed executions. It’s possible it will be used for a future lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has paused all executions this year as the Tennessee capital punishment system faces potential serious repercussions.
Pike has spent the last 30 years behind bars after she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Aged 18 at the time, Pike met Slemmer at a job training camp for low-income young people.
She and Shipp, 17, lured Slemmer to the woods, where she was bludgeoned to death, with court documents reporting that Pike believed Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend.
As Slemmer attempted to flee, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office wrote at the time, Pike ‘sliced her stomach with a box cutter’.
And despite desperately pleading for her life, Slemmer was repeatedly kicked in the face and had her throat cut.
Pike finally smashed the teen on the head with a rock, later boasting about her crime to her friend.
Slemmer’s body had been so badly beaten that, when she was discovered the following day, a Tennessee Grounds Department employee mistook it for that of an animal.
Pike ultimately confessed and was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996, while Shipp was also convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was given a life sentence.
Speaking after Pike’s botched execution, Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, called it ‘a mess’.
Martinez had been in the witness room with her husband, Raul Martinez Jr., after which she told People: ‘If I could have gotten in that room, I would have taken the box cutter and cut her up like she did Colleen.’
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