Doctors declared brain death the day before Christa Pike spoke

Ochrista Pike's lawyers, the American sentenced to death who survived two lethal injections in the state of Tennessee last week, revealed this Wednesday that doctors even declared brain death before the woman spoke again. 

Quoted by the U.S. press, attorney Randy Spivey revealed that, on Monday, he was informed that the inmate, 50, was in brain death and that life support would be withdrawn. 

“On Monday night, we had understood that Christa was brain dead and that life support would be removed the next day,” Spivey said at a press conference. “But on Tuesday, for everyone’s shock, Christa woke up and started talking.”

The lawyer stressed that there is no “an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning” and stressed that his client “has a long way to recover ahead” after the failed attempt to execute him. 

“ I don't want to speculate too much, but according to what was transmitted to us, the first thing she said when she woke up was: ‘Where am I and who are you?’ said Spivey.

The lawyer, who refused to answer specific medical questions due to his lack of medical qualifications, explained only that Pike has a blood clot in his arm, suffers from pneumonia and still cannot swallow.

Christa Pike “is angry and confused with everything at this time” and “understands what they did to her to some extent,” Spivey said.

At a hearing this Wednesday in Nashville, Pike's lawyers asked the court to order the Tennessee Corrections Department to keep evidence of the case and provide further information on what went wrong.

A judge ordered the state to preserve “everything in the royal room.”.

“Part of the problem we faced is that, until yesterday, our client was unconscious, unable to communicate with lawyers, unable to communicate with health professionals and, without their consent, a new lawsuit cannot be filed,” Luke Ihnen, a federal public defender, told the court.

His legal team said on Tuesday that the pike prognosis remains uncertain and at least the woman faces a prolonged recovery.

His arms were burned and blistered after attempted lethal injection and is handcuffed to the hospital bed, they added.

The failed execution renewed the scrutiny of how states apply the death penalty, in particular the use of lethal injection.

Texas was about to perform its first U.S. execution today since Tennessee tried to eliminate Pike.

Pike's lawyers demanded a court order to force the prison system to preserve information on failed execution, including batch numbers of medicines, needles, execution records and other information.

The judge of the Chancellery Court, I’Ashea Myles, indicated that her order to save the evidence would be broad, saying that the state should keep records, witness reports, e-mails, along with medicines, syringes, IV lines and other medical materials.

The Tennessee Attorney General's Office said a court order wasn't necessary.

John W. Ayers, Deputy Attorney General, said that the evidence from the execution chamber had already been collected and registered.

Republican governor Bill Lee called what happened “deeply disturbing” and ordered a “comprehensive review by third parties to determine exactly what happened.”

The governor postponed the only other execution of the planned state this year. The head of the state prison system resigned following the failed execution.

Christa Pike's recovery is still uncertain. Specialists in medicine and lethal injection have focused on possibility that a problem in line IV caused the drug to accumulate in her tissue instead of entering the bloodstream.

Pike’s lawyers wrote in their request to the court that “apparently at no time did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had burst.”

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. 

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.