Christa Pike is “conscious and talking” after two lethal injections

Christa Pike, the American woman sentenced to death who survived two lethal injections in the state of Tennessee last week, is “conscious and talking” while receiving “intensive medical care”.

“ Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaks and continues to receive intensive medical care. Despite the severe damage she suffered in her arms, she remains handcuffed and chained to the bed. Your recovery is something unprecedented from a medical point of view. Its prognosis remains uncertain, but at least we expect a long recovery.”, said their lawyers through a statement quoted by The Associated Press (AP) news agency.

His lawyers also said they were grateful to the hospital’s rescuers and medical staff, “who treated Christa as a human being and provided exceptional care.”.

Christa Pike, now 50, was the only woman on death row in the U.S. state of Tennessee and survived the two lethal doses of pentobarbital administered during execution last Wednesday.

Pike remained awake, spoke and sang with the spiritual guide after the start of the drug administration and, after the first dose, continued to move and breathe audibly.

According to witnesses, Pike was alive and making noises even after the second attempt at lethal injection, being transported by ambulance from prison. 

The Tennessee Department of Corrections stated, in a statement, that “followed all stages of the legal protocol and established for executions, approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”.

This protocol provides that a second set of syringes with medicines is given “if the prisoner is not dead” after the first set. The protocol does not specify what should happen if the person remains alive after the second dose.

Following the incident, Tennessee State Governor Bill Lee announced a temporary suspension of executions scheduled for 2026.

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. 

[News updated at 10:29 p.m.]