Christa Pike Released From Hospital After Surviving Execution Attempt — Sent Back To Prison

Imagine bracing for the last day of your life, knowing the state has set a time and a method, and then waking up days later still breathing. Welp, that is the reality Christa Pike is living with now. Her attorneys confirmed Saturday that she was discharged from a local hospital and returned to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has lived for more than 30 years.

RELATED: Death Row Inmate Christa Pike, Whose Execution Attempt Failed Last Week, Is Conscious And “Speaking Limitedly”

As we previously reported, Miss Pike survived not one but two dang doses of lethal injection on the evening of September 30. The state used pentobarbital, and she ended up on life support for six days. Her lawyers say she now has pneumonia and no function in her arms, and they describe a “long road to recovery.” Tennessee set out to carry out a death sentence and wound up running a medical emergency instead…They said she is still getting medical care at the prison and thanked the first responders and medical team who treated her.

Her legal team says none of this should have been a shock. Attorney Randy Spivey said the state had been warned, and that what happened was exactly what they predicted. Her lawyers had argued against lethal injection because of vein problems that could complicate the procedure. They also say Pike cooperated and even helped the team find a workable vein.

The governor’s office moved fast once the dust settled. Gov. Bill Lee paused the remaining scheduled execution for the rest of the year, and he asked for a “comprehensive, third-party review” of what went wrong. That pause carries extra weight because this was not the state’s first stumble. Lee even granted Tony Carruthers a one-year reprieve in May after an earlier failed attempt. Two botched executions in one year is a pattern, and the review will have to say so plainly.

None of this erases why Pike is on death row. She was convicted in the 1995 torture killing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job Corps program. Slemmer was 19. Her family wanted this sentence carried out, and her mother traveled from Florida to witness it. May Martinez has said Tennessee “owes me a big apology.” 

A family that spent three decades waiting for closure got a hospital drama and more questions.

Pike’s story also carries a heavy backstory that her defenders keep putting forward. Amnesty International points out she was 18 at the time of the crime, and says she endured severe abuse and neglect growing up while the state failed to protect her. Her trial lawyers, the group adds, presented little of that evidence to the jury. 

Many people will see that as context and not an excuse, and the argument over it is nowhere near settled.

A judge has ordered the state to preserve all evidence tied to the failed execution, and her attorneys have called that hearing just a first step. Her legal team has also asked the governor to turn her sentence into life in prison. For now, Pike is alive, recovering, and sitting at the center of a fight over whether Tennessee’s death chamber can do what it promises.