Death row inmate Christa Pike, 50, has regained consciousness days after surviving a botched execution in Tennessee.
Pike was reportedly awake and able to speak on Tuesday, October 6, after spending nearly a week unconscious following the failed execution attempt. She had been administered two doses of pentobarbital but did not die.
Her legal team said Pike remains in critical condition and is still receiving hospital care. She was reportedly taken off a ventilator and is now breathing on her own with supplemental oxygen.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist advising Pike’s legal team, said she is able to speak and appears to know who and where she is. However, she has no memory of the execution itself although she remembers being a patient in the hospital and being placed on a ventilator.
Pike reportedly suffered serious injuries to her arms after medical staff made multiple attempts to establish intravenous access during the failed execution.
Her attorneys described her recovery as medically unprecedented and said she faces a potentially lengthy recovery, with her long-term prognosis still uncertain.
Pike has spent about 30 years on death row for the 1995 murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer.