Death Row Inmate Christa Pike, Who Survived Two Lethal Injections, Has Regained Consciousness

50-year-old American Christa Pike, sentenced to death in the US, survived two lethal injections, "against all odds, regained consciousness and can speak," her lawyers reported on Tuesday, writes BBC.

According to their statement, Pike continues treatment in the intensive care unit of a Tennessee state hospital, where she was admitted unconscious last week after an attempt to carry out the sentence – she was given two injections of pentobarbital, which, however, did not take her life.

All this time, doctors were working on removing pentobarbital from her body.

US law provides that a person sentenced to death can only be given two such injections.

Pike is in the hospital in handcuffs and leg shackles attached to the bed, despite the injuries she sustained during the injections, lawyers said.

Prior to the execution of the sentence, Pike's defense warned that the peculiarities of her veins could complicate her execution and cause her "undue suffering."

According to Pike's lawyers, the fact that she regained consciousness after two failed attempts to carry out the death sentence is "unprecedented from a medical point of view." Although the prognosis remains uncertain, "at a minimum, we expect a long recovery," her defenders' statement said.

Pike is the only known case in US history where a death row inmate remained alive after a fully carried out execution attempt, they recalled.

What happens next remains unclear: Tennessee authorities have not yet announced whether they will try to carry out the sentence again.

However, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all death penalty executions until the end of the year, and the head of the state's prison system announced last weekend that he plans to resign.

One of Pike's lawyers, Stephen Ferrell, previously urged the governor to "at a minimum" commute her death sentence to life imprisonment. "She survived a torturous execution attempt," he explained. "And before that, she spent more than 30 years in prison, most of that time in solitary confinement. We don't know yet — and may never know — what suffering she endured during that time."

Pike was 18 when she and her then 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured, and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom they met at a camp for troubled teenagers. Pike was to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years.

Representatives of the US penitentiary system have not yet made statements that could shed light on why even two injections, each of which was supposed to be lethal, could not take Pike's life.

Anesthesiologist Joel Zivot, who consulted Christa Pike's defense team, said that the two doses of pentobarbital administered to her would have been sufficient for her to "definitely die" if the substance had entered the bloodstream.

According to Zivot, it is possible that the injections were not intravenous but subcutaneous — meaning the pentobarbital did not enter the woman's circulatory system but spread in the tissues under the skin, which saved her life.

Pike's lawyers had previously warned that her medical history and anatomical features — including thrombocytosis (a blood clotting disorder) and small veins — could lead her to experience "unnecessary" pain and suffering during a lethal injection.

The medical consequences for Pike of two lethal doses of pentobarbital are still unknown to doctors.

According to Zivot, due to the delay in providing Pike with medical assistance after the second injection, she "quite possibly" has brain damage, but a "thorough neurological examination" is required for this.

"Even with all available treatments, her chances of survival remain uncertain," he said a few days ago when Pike was still unconscious. According to him, Pike will likely have "serious medical problems that could significantly impact" her quality of life.

Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham University School of Law, told the BBC that she was "absolutely shocked" that Pike was conscious and speaking, calling the case "unprecedented."

According to her, Pike is only the eighth person to survive a lethal injection execution attempt. However, in the seven previous cases, the executioners were not even able to inject anything into the inmates' veins.

Pike is "the only person who actually had some toxic substance administered," Denno explained.

• 0
• 0
• 1
• 0
• 4
• 2
• 0
• 0