Krista PikeAttorneys said she suffered from pneumonia, blood clots, was unable to swallow and was unable to move her arms or hands once she regained consciousness in a Tennessee hospital, days after the death row inmate survived a botched execution in that state.
“Her hands looked like they were going to blow up a surgical glove,” Randy Spivey, one of Pike’s attorneys, said at a news conference Wednesday. “It was amazing.”
Spivey said he and Pike’s other attorneys were informed Monday that she was brain dead and expected to be taken off life support. But by the next day, she woke up and started talking, he said.
“I have no explanation for what happened,” the attorney told reporters after the hearing in Davidson County Chancery Court. He said Pike was confused and disoriented at first, but she began to remember details from Wednesday’s execution.
In addition to a lung infection, blood clots in her arm and swallowing problems that prevented her from eating, Pike’s arms and hands were “extremely swollen,” Spivey said, adding “we don’t know what function she’s going to regain.”
Court approves evidence request
Pike’s attorneys shared an update on her health outside the Davidson County Courthouse on Wednesday, ahead of an emergency hearing asking the Tennessee Department of Corrections to preserve records and other evidence of her botched lethal injection.
Gov. Iahia Miles issued the order, saying the state would be required to preserve “relevant evidence” from Pike’s failed execution on Sept. 30, including “medications, IV fluids, needles, catheters, medical supplies, restraints, gurneys” and anything else that was in the execution chamber at the time of the execution.
Waste, such as packaging supplies and labels, must also be preserved, as well as all written or digital records, including records of communications via encrypted platforms, witness accounts and correspondence regarding equipment or drug administration issues, Myers said.
She explicitly instructed the state “not to lose, misplace, or accidentally delete any information that may be relevant to this lawsuit.”
Execution consequences
Staff gave 50-year-old Parker two doses of a lethal injection drug, but in an unprecedented turn of events, her legal team confirmed shortly after the operation failed that she was alive and hospitalized. Her legal team said Tuesday that she has regained consciousness She said this from her hospital bed.
Pike’s attorney also said Tuesday that she is continuing to “receive emergency medical care” as hospital staff try to remove the deadly drug pentobarbital from her system. They added that her prognosis remained unclear but she was expected to face at least a “lengthy recovery.”
Legal team renews appeal to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee Mitigating Pike’s death sentenceurged him to commute the sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole so that the state could not try again to execute Pike, a common practice after prisoners survive botched execution proceedings. However, while others have survived botched procedures before, Pike is the only known inmate from the modern death penalty era in the United States to remain alive after actually receiving lethal chemicals.
“The state has given no assurance that Ms. Pike will not be executed in the future,” Luke Inan, one of Pike’s attorneys, said in court Wednesday. Inan added that the evidence the defense seeks to preserve for the corrections department could help them build their case in the future to prevent this from happening.
Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion Friday asking the Department of Corrections to “preserve all relevant physical, documentary and electronic evidence of the failed execution,” which they said amounted to “TDOC evidence.” [Tennessee Department of Correction] Deliberate indifference to Ms. Pike’s basic medical needs and reckless disregard for basic medical practices and their own lethal injection protocols resulted in cruel and unusual punishment being inflicted on Ms. Pike. ”
They accuse correctional officers who handled Pike’s execution of failing to properly set up an intravenous line to inject the lethal drug and not realizing her vein had “ruptured,” allegedly allowing pentobarbital to spread throughout her body, resulting in a painful and botched surgery. In court, Inan also cited the secrecy surrounding execution protocols and procedures in Tennessee and elsewhere in the country, which makes arguing death penalty cases particularly challenging.
“We don’t know what they have because they won’t tell us,” Inan told the court. “Accordingly, the preservation order seeks to preserve the broadest possible evidence.”
Medical records
Last week, Lee rejected Pike’s request for a commutation before his execution and rejected her request for clemency days before the execution. Afterwards, he Canceled the remaining execution It is scheduled to be held in Tennessee later this year and said an investigation will be conducted to determine what went wrong. The current director of the Tennessee Department of Corrections has resigned, despite an official statement from the agency claiming it was adhering to the agreement.
Peck was convicted in 1995 of the brutal murder of her classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Parker, who was 18 at the time of the murder, spent more than three decades on Tennessee’s death row. As the only woman awaiting execution in the state for the vast majority of her life, she was alone for nearly her entire incarceration. She was the first woman to be attempted execution in Tennessee in more than 200 years, and the first person in the state’s modern era to be attempted for a crime committed when she was 18, 19 or 20 years old.
Before Parker’s failed injection, her case had attracted public attention as human rights leaders and advocacy groups rallied against her death sentence, raising questions about her age at the time of her conviction and her long history of mental illness and childhood abuse. But those who strongly supported her execution, including prosecutors and jurors in Pike’s original trial, as well as the judges who presided over the case and her many appeals, have countered that the death penalty was necessary given the horrific nature of her crimes. Among them was Slemmer’s mother, Mae Martinez.