Christa Pike discharged from hospital after surviving execution attempt

Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection, has been moved back to prison.

Pike, 50, was discharged from the hospital and is back at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Centre, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said in a written statement.

“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” the statement said.

“She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”

Pike had been hospitalised since surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state attempted to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

At one point she was on a ventilator and her attorneys did not expect her to survive. However, they said Pike woke up and began talking and walking with assistance.

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The Death Penalty Information Centre says Pike is the first person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.

The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said what went wrong in the execution.

Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on whether a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue instead of entering her bloodstream.

Pike’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed.”

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The failed execution brought renewed scrutiny to how Tennessee carries out death sentences.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has since postponed the state’s only other scheduled execution this year and ordered a review of what went wrong. The state’s prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution.

Pike’s lawyers have asked for Governor Lee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment, and experts are debating whether she should face execution again.

“She has satisfied this very, very high standard for cruel and unusual punishment,” Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law professor who has studied execution methods for 36 years, said.

“She also has a very good double-jeopardy argument. They carried out every aspect of the execution. She didn’t die, but every process they intended, they did it.”

Seattle University Law Professor Michael Russo, who handled capital cases as a public defender in Los Angeles, called the failed execution horrible, but doubted whether the Supreme Court would stop the state from trying again on double-jeopardy grounds, should it decide to do so.

“There’s nobody else in the history of the death penalty in this country who has gone through what she’s been through,” Russo said.

“I think what this Supreme Court would say is, her sentence was to die - to be executed - not to suffer an attempt at execution.”

The US Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual punishment”.

As the process got underway, Pike was asked if she had a final statement and she spoke of being at peace. About five minutes later, she raised her head and said her arm hurt.

Later, she appeared to lose consciousness but could be heard breathing heavily until media witnesses were escorted from the witness room nearly 90 minutes into the execution.

An ambulance then took her to a hospital.

-Reported with Associated Press