Tennessee death row inmate conscious after surviving botched execution

Christa Pike, a 50-year-old death row inmate in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking after surviving a failed execution attempt last week, according to her lawyers.

Pike remains under critical medical care in hospital while handcuffed, her attorneys said in a statement issued on Tuesday. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.

According to reports, Pike survived two unsuccessful attempts at lethal injection last Wednesday. She was then hospitalised and remained unconscious for several days while medical staff worked to clear the injected chemical from her system.

Her legal team and medical experts have described her recovery as unprecedented, noting she is believed to be the only person known to have survived a lethal injection. Her lawyers said her prognosis is still uncertain, but anticipate she will require an extended recovery period.

Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, expressed strong surprise at Pike's current conscious state. She noted that in seven previous cases of survived execution attempts, the executioners had failed to successfully inject the lethal chemical into the inmates' veins at all, unlike in Pike's case.