Christa Pike is up, walking and ‘angry’ about two botched execution attempts that she survived, lawyer says

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1h ago

By NATASHA ANDERSON, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER 13:30 08 Oct 2026, updated 13:30 08 Oct 2026

Convicted killer Christa Pike is up, walking and angry about the two botched attempts to execute her last week, her lawyers say.

Pike, 50, woke up in the hospital on Tuesday, six days after she was given two supposedly lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital in a Tennessee prison last week.

Although she is still mentally ‘foggy,’ her attorney Stephen Ferrell says she is ‘very aware’ of what happened to her and doing ‘fairly well.’

‘She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, not very far,’ Ferrell told the BBC today.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer, is ‘angry and confused’ about the situation.

‘I think it’s kind of good and bad,’ Ferrell explained. ‘Good that she is fairly with it, but she’s also somewhat foggy. She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.’

The killer remains shackled to her hospital bed, awake and able to speak a little but is incapable of swallowing or moving her arms, her legal team said.

She is also suffering from pneumonia and has a blood clot in her arm, they added.

Pike was administered two doses of the lethal injection drug at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on September 30.

She survived the injections, however, and was rushed to a hospital where she was in critical condition for several days, unconscious and on a ventilator.

‘On Monday night, it was our understanding that Christa was brain dead, and that life support would be removed the next day,’ her lawyer Randy Spivey said.

‘But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone…Christa woke up and began talking.’

Spivey, who was not with Pike when she woke up, was told her first words were, ‘Where am I?’ and ‘Who are you?’

Her prognosis remains unclear and she has a long road to recovery, he said.

‘I think she is angry and confused about everything right now,’ he said, adding: ‘She is very aware of what they did to her – up to a point.’

‘She cannot move either of her arms, both of her arms and hands are tremendously swollen, and we do not know what, if any, function she will regain in her arms,’ he continued, adding that ‘there’s a long road ahead’ for her recovery.

‘Medical staff have asked that the shackles be removed and have been denied that request,’ Pike’s lawyer Luke Ihnen said at a court hearing.

The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the first person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.

Many questions remain, though, about her prognosis for recovery and whether Tennessee will make another attempt to execute Pike, now age 50.

Her lawyers argue Pike has suffered enough and want the governor to commute her sentence.

A judge in Nashville told the state on Wednesday that the Tennessee Department of Correction needs to save evidence including ‘anything that was in the actual room.’

Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles said she plans to issue a sweeping order that will direct the state to maintain recordings, witness accounts, emails, drugs, syringes, IV lines and other medical items.

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office had argued a court order was unnecessary. John W Ayers, assistant attorney general, said some evidence from the death chamber already had been collected and logged. He declined to comment after the hearing.

Pike’s attorneys accused the state of carrying out the attempted execution in secrecy, saying more transparency is needed. They also repeated their calls for clemency for Pike. Republican Governor Bill Lee has not yet indicated how he’ll respond.

The attempted execution got underway on September 30 when Pike was given a chance to make a final statement.

‘I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,’ the killer said in her ‘last’ words. She described herself as at peace.

About five minutes later, she raised her head and said her arm was hurting. At some point she appeared to lose consciousness, but she could be heard breathing heavily until media were escorted from the witness room nearly 90 minutes into the execution. An ambulance took Pike to a hospital.

Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on the possibility that a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue rather than entering her bloodstream.

Pike’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that ‘apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown.’

State officials have not yet offered an explanation.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp in 1995.

Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area, cut her with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt.

Shipp then carved a pentagram into the victim’s body.

He was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Pike would have been the first woman put to death by the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Texas on Wednesday carried out the first execution in the US since the botched attempt to put Pike to death.

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