US death row inmate Christa Pike discharged from hospital after botched execution

US death row inmate Christa Pike has been discharged from hospital and returned to prison after surviving a botched execution in Tennessee on September 30.

The 50-year-old is continuing to receive medical care after surviving two lethal injection attempts using the drug pentobarbital, which left her in critical condition.

According to US media reports, Pike regained consciousness earlier this week and began speaking again, surprising medical staff, experts and her legal team. Her lawyers say she faces a long road to recovery.

In a statement released on Saturday, Pike’s lawyers said she was grateful to the first responders and medical team who treated her during what they described as extraordinary circumstances. It remains unclear what medical care she is receiving now that she has returned to prison.

The Tennessee Department of Correction has yet to explain why the execution failed, although it has defended the method used.

At a court hearing on Wednesday, Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Will Ayers told a judge he did not know whether the state intended to make another attempt to execute Pike.

The judge ordered the state to preserve all evidence related to the failed injections, which could form the basis of a future lawsuit against the state.

Pike lost consciousness following the failed execution and was taken to a local hospital. Her legal team initially feared she was brain dead and believed she could be taken off life support at any moment.

Her lawyer, Randy Spivey, said Pike began speaking again on Tuesday, with her first words being, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”

At a news conference on Wednesday, her lawyers said she was shackled to her hospital bed and suffering from pneumonia and significant swelling in her arms. They also said she was unable to swallow.

Spivey said it was unclear what long-term impact the ordeal would have on her mental health, adding that Pike was feeling angry and confused.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, met at a job training camp for low-income young people.

Pike was 18 at the time of the crime. Shipp was spared the death penalty because he was not legally an adult when the murder occurred and remains in prison.

Pike was the first woman scheduled to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Her lawyers had spent decades appealing her sentence, but both the US Supreme Court and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declined to halt the execution in the days leading up to it.

Following the failed execution, her legal team renewed calls for her sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Pike’s case remains unprecedented, as she is believed to be the only person to have survived an attempted execution by lethal injection.