Christa Pike was nearly taken off life support before waking, lawyers say

Lawyers for Christa Pike , the Tennessee woman who survived a botched execution attempt, have said that their client was nearly disconnected from life support before she awoke this week in a United States hospital.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Randy Spivey, who represents Pike, described her as feeling “angry and confused” about what happened.

“Monday night, our understanding was that Christa was brain dead, and life support would be removed the next day,” Spivey told reporters.

But on Tuesday, he said, “Christa woke up and began talking.”

Spivey added that Pike did not seem to recall the execution attempt itself. Upon waking up in her hospital room in Nashville, she reportedly asked those in the room, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”

Pike had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 30. But after receiving two doses of pentobarbital, she remained alive, becoming the first person believed to have survived such an injection in the US.

The incident has renewed questions about the use of the death penalty in the country and its legality.

Critics have long called such procedures a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments”.

Prior to her execution date, Pike’s lawyers had also sought to have her sentence commuted, citing concerns about her mental health. She had been convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for participating in the murder of a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

On Wednesday, her legal team described her as cooperating with Tennessee officials during the scheduled execution.

“She was kind and polite as they worked for an hour, stabbing her arm with needle after needle, and then she felt the burn of the pentobarbital,” Spivey said.

“And then she woke up in a hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know.”

While the lethal injections were meant to go into Pike’s veins, experts have speculated that the pentobarbital instead pooled in the tissue of her arm. Her arms and hands remain heavily swollen and covered in blisters, Spivey added.

It is unclear whether the state of Tennessee will attempt to execute Pike a second time.

But Spivey has indicated he and Pike’s other lawyers will once more seek to have her sentence commuted, based on the suffering she experienced during the botched execution.

On Wednesday, in anticipation of such legal proceedings, Nashville Judge I’Ashea Myles ordered the state to save evidence from the execution attempt, including drugs, syringes and IV lines, as well as recordings and any communication records between officials.

Since the execution attempt, Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee has also ordered a halt to carrying out other death penalty sentences. Another execution had been scheduled in the state for later this year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said in a statement.

In the wake of the botched execution, the state’s top prison official, Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada, has announced he will resign this month.

Pike’s lethal injection was not the only botched execution in Tennessee this year.

Governor Lee granted a one-year reprieve to Tony Carruthers, whom officials attempted to execute in May 2026. But after an hour of trying, they could not find a vein to connect an IV for the pentobarbital, and the execution was suspended.

Other states, however, have signalled they would proceed with carrying out death penalty cases despite the Tennessee incidents.

A Texas court refused to halt the execution by pentobarbital of 46-year-old Jamaal Howard, scheduled for Wednesday, despite appeals from his lawyers citing Pike’s botched execution.

Those opposed to the death penalty have argued that such executions can cause unnecessary suffering. In Pike’s case, she reportedly kicked a sheet off her body during the execution attempt and said she was feeling pain.

Before her scheduled execution, Pike had warned authorities about the difficulty of finding veins in her arm and had even requested to be executed by firing squad.