Christa Pike returns to prison after surviving execution attempt

Christa Pike has been discharged from a hospital and returned to a Tennessee prison after surviving a lethal injection attempt on Sept. 30, her lawyers said Saturday. She remains under medical care.

Pike, 50, is back at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, where she was held before the planned execution and has spent more than 30 years, according to her attorneys.

“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,” attorneys Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason said in a statement. “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.”

Pike received two doses of a lethal injection drug during the execution attempt. The BBC identified the drug as pentobarbital and reported that she was left in critical condition. Soon after the procedure failed, her lawyers confirmed that she was alive and had been taken to a hospital.

Her condition improved over the following days. Her legal team said Tuesday that she had regained consciousness and was speaking from her hospital bed. By Wednesday, she was taking “limited steps” with help, the lawyers said. On Thursday, they reported that she was walking “with some assistance” and that her arms were “healing and regaining movement and strength.” Her lungs were clear, and she had begun eating a regular diet, they said.

Pike is the only person known to have survived an execution attempt in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, as cited by CBS News. The BBC described her as believed to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt by lethal injection.

Pike was convicted in 1995 of killing Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate. According to court filings cited by CBS News, Pike was 18 when she tortured and killed Slemmer in a wooded area of the University of Tennessee campus, slashing her with a meat cleaver and box cutter for up to an hour with help from her boyfriend and a friend.

The BBC reported that Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed Slemmer. The two women had met at a job training camp for low-income young people, the BBC said.