This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023.
Tennessee Department of Correction/AP
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Tennessee Department of Correction/AP
Christa Pike was released from a local hospital and is back in prison, at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Tennessee, her attorneys Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey, Stephen Ferrell and Kelly Gleason said in a statement on Saturday.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” the attorneys said.
They also said Pike is receiving medical care at the prison and they are tracking her recovery.
Pike had been hospitalized for several days after her botched execution last month, in which she received and survived two doses of the sedative pentobarbital.
NPR reported on the Sept. 30 execution attempt, in which Pike was strapped to a gurney and administered the barbiturate that is normally used in the U.S. executions. Shortly after the first dose was administered, Pike said her arm was burning and asked whether it was supposed to feel that way. She then said, “Please try up on my shoulder higher.”
Spivey, who witnessed the execution attempt, previously told NPR that after a second dose Pike became unconscious but continued breathing and making choking sounds. “It “went on for so long,” he said. He has called Pike “a survivor.”
Judge I’Ashea Myles of the Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville ordered the prison officials to preserve all evidence, such as messages, connected to Pike’s failed execution.
Pike was on death row for a murder she committed when she was 18 years old. She and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, in 1995, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow classmate in the Knoxville Job Corps. Shipp received life in prison without parole for his part in the murder.
NPR’s Scott Neuman contributed to this report.
