Six days after being shot full of a drug meant to kill her, Christa Pike awoke in a Nashville hospital, shackled to a bed and in a room where she knew no one. Ms. Pike’s lawyers had been told to expect life support to end because her brain was not functioning after the attempt on Sept. 30 to execute her for killing a classmate decades before. But now, she was awake and in a swirl of what one lawyer called a mix of anger and confusion. Her condition remains severe, with a blood clot in one arm and pneumonia, and she had not eaten — she was unable to swallow when her lawyers saw her.
“She woke up in a hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know with a tube down her throat,” said lawyer Randy Spivey. “We don’t know the toll all of this will take, but Christa is a survivor.” Ms. Pike’s awareness heightened the stakes of a procedural hearing in Nashville on Wednesday. A judge said she would order Tennessee to preserve records and evidence tied to the execution attempt and to ensure Ms. Pike could communicate easily with her lawyers.
A lawyer with the office of the state’s attorney general told a judge on Wednesday that he could not say whether Tennessee would try again to end her life. A spokeswoman for Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, who paused executions while an independent investigation is underway, has not responded to questions about whether he would grant Ms. Pike clemency. Her lawyers have pleaded for him to allow her to spend the rest of her life in prison.
Ms. Pike, 50, was on death row since she was a teenager after being found guilty in 1996 for the torture and murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19. Ms. Slemmer’s family had supported capital punishment for Ms. Pike. The execution on Sept. 30 was first delayed by legal maneuvering, then resumed after the Supreme Court allowed it to proceed. Witnesses described Ms. Pike as alert and lucid for stretches of time before she was taken to a hospital.
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