Christa Pike's lawyer gives update on her condition as death row inmate is 'critically ill'

Christa Pike's lawyers have revealed her condition four days after she was taken to hospital having survived two doses of lethal injection on 30 September as part of her execution sentencing.

Pike allegedly 'remains critically ill' and is being treated at a hospital in Nashville, Texas, with her legal team claiming she 'may not fully recover'.

Her lawyer Stephen Ferrel told CNN of her current status: “She is guarded. I’m not sure who may have seen her.

“I know I have not seen her. The state of Tennessee has not yet said whether it will ultimately try to execute her again.”

He added that she 'may not fully recover' is she isn't executed, noting that her future remains uncertain.

Ferrell said: “I think one of the main things that will leave this up in the air for a while is the fact that we don’t know what the prognosis is, as in the long term prognosis."

Christa Pike was sentenced to death 30 years ago and her sentence was finally carried out, but she's still alive (WBIR10)

Previously, per court filings released after her failed execution, per CBS News, lawyers claim she has significant injuries to both arms and requires a ventilator to breathe.

The 50-year-old was injected with two doses of pentobarbital as planned, however, witnesses described her as ‘snoring’ loudly just moments later.

Pike’s execution went forward with its plan, despite earlier petitions to stop it from going ahead due to health problems that were suspected of making the doses unable to reach her hear.

"We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment," her lawyer Randy Spivey previously said of her condition.

Dr Joel Zivot from the Emory University School of Medicine, who is also part of Pike’s legal team, revealed that it is likely Pike will be brain damaged by the toxins used to attempt to kill her.

“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” Zivot told the BBC.

Pike is 'critical' (Tennessee dept of corrections)

Pike has been the only woman on death row in Tennessee for three decades and was set to become the first to be executed in the state in over 200 years after her 1996 conviction.

Pike has been locked up since 1996 after killing her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was 18 at the time.

Just one year after the murder, she was convicted of killing Slemmer, with her then-boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp.

Lawyers acting for Pike have blamed her damaged veins and ‘degraded pentobarbital’ for her failed execution, reported the New York Post.

They said: “We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”

Just weeks before her execution was set to take place, Pike's lawyers spent three days in a hearing centred mostly around her veins.

They argued they were small and hard to access, per The Tennessean, as Pike revealed she was fearful of the execution going wrong.