After unsuccessful execution, Christa Pike is “recovery physical remarkable”

Christa Pike had a “markable physical recovery” in the days following her unsuccessful execution in Tennessee, USA. However, “there is still a lot of cognitive uncertainty,” says the lawyer to ABC News on Thursday.

“ We are not exactly sure about the long-term effects, but it is clear that she has not fully recovered her cognitive abilities and may have a long way to go,” said one of her lawyers, Stephen Ferrell, from the East Tennessee Federal Public Defender Service, ABC News.

According to the same, the woman “is going through psychological trauma and still suffers from it”, despite “the physical state is improving remarkably”.

Christa Pike, sentenced to death in Tennessee, survived two lethal injections, something considered “unprecedented” by his lawyers. The doctors, remember, even declared brain death before the woman spoke again. 

What happened to the execution?

Local authorities are investigating what may have gone wrong in the execution of the 50-year-old woman, whose recovery has been described as “something unprecedented from a medical point of view” by her lawyers.

The Associated Press (AP) reviewed the case and spoke to several medical experts, who pointed out some possibilities that might explain how Pike managed to survive the two lethal injections.

One of the first hypotheses is that only a small amount of the drug may have entered the bloodstream. Another hypothesis may be related to the quality of the drug, according to Michaela Almgren, a pharmacist and professor from South Carolina, who has consulted on various processes related to lethal injections.

Convicted death penalty for crime committed in 1995

Pike was sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old colleague of the Job Corps vocational training program in Knoxville in 1995.

Slemmer was stabbed and beaten to death by Pike and her boyfriend, a colleague of both in the same institution. The case became one of the most mediatic at the time in the United States, especially because the couple recorded a pentagram – a symbol associated with Satan – in the victim's body. 

According to the prosecution, Pike was afraid that Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, so he lured her to a wooded area on January 12, 1995, where he stabbed her with a x-act and assaulted her with a piece of asphalt. Tadaryl Shipp, Pike's boyfriend, admitted to being responsible for recording the pentagram.

The woman was sentenced to the death penalty in March 1996, while her boyfriend received a life sentence, with possibility of parole, for being underage at the time of the murder.