Christa Pike is conscious and speaking after botched execution

Christa Pike, a 50-year-old Tennessee inmate, is conscious and speaking after surviving a botched execution attempt last week. According to her lawyers, Pike received two lethal doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on September 30, but survived and was rushed to hospital. She had been unconscious and on a ventilator in critical condition, but her condition has since improved.

Pike's lawyers said she continues to receive critical medical care, despite severe damage to her arms, and is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is considered medically unprecedented. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was 18 years old. Her lawyers have called for Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The prison chief has resigned following the failed execution, and Governor Lee has suspended the carrying out of capital punishment in the state pending an independent investigation. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pike is the first inmate ever to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs. Her prognosis remains unclear, but her lawyers expect a long recovery.

Brief written by urgent.news from Le Monde English, Jerusalem Post, New Straits Times, Hindustan Times - World News, The Indian Express — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.