Will Christa Pike face a second execution after she wakes up following botched attempt
After three decades on death row and a failed execution attempt via the lethal injection, Christa Pike has now woken up.
The killer, now aged 50, is 'conscious and speaking' her lawyers have confirmed. However she remains in hospital receiving critical care by specialists.
Pike was sentenced to death after murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995, survived the two failed lethal injections last Wednesday (30 September) in Tennessee.
After being rushed to hospital, she remained unconscious for days as medical staff cleared her body of the injected chemical which was supposed to claim her life.
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She has become the first person ever to get full doses of the drugs intended to kill her and survive. She was supposed to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in two centuries.
Her legal team said faulty IV lines allowed the drug to leak into her tissue, causing both arms to become ‘swollen, burned and blistered’.
She has been locked up since 1996 after killing her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was 18 at the time.
Gov. Bill Lee later halted the one remaining execution for the rest of the year in Tennessee pending an investigation.
Pike's case is estimated by an anti-death penalty group to have cost taxpayers over $3 million so far, with medical bills, legal challenges, her continued incarceration and investigation costs set to push that figure higher, reports The US Sun.
According to published Nashville hospital rates, the six days of intensive care Pike has received could already have produced a $26K bill, not including the costs of round-the-clock security and continuing legal fees.
Will she face a second execution?
Whether or not Pike will face a second execution has not yet been determined.
Her former attorney previously told LADbible that if she had been severely brain damaged and left incapacitated by the first botched attempt, that it would not be attempted again.
However Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has not yet responded to repeated calls from her attorney's to commute her sentence from the death penalty to spending the rest of her life in prison.
"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care," her attorneys said in a statement.
"Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery."
There is the possibility that Pike could face a second execution, especially due to her regaining consciousness.
However the last time the Supreme Court had to address whether an inmate who survived an execution would face another one was back in 1947.
"We’re in uncharted territory," Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, told USA today.
"The U.S. Supreme Court has not decided whether a second execution attempt would violate the constitution since 1947.
"These are questions that have never needed to be asked before and no one knows the answers.”
Earlier this year, in May, Tennessee had botched another execution as inmate Tony Carruthers also survived.
Executioners failed to establish a second IV line required under the state's execution protocol. And, after spending more than an hour strapped down, the state abandoned the execution.
He was granted a rare one-year reprieve leaving open the option to try to execute him again.
James Holt