Krista Pike, who lost consciousness and was on life support for six days after a failed execution attempt in Tennessee, has a “long road to recovery,” her attorney Randy Spivey said at a news conference Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Pike miraculously woke up and started talking, but she was far from out of the woods. Spivey described health issues including blood clots in one arm, pneumonia, the inability to swallow and loss of use of the arm.
“Neither we nor Krista began to think about what this would mean for her mental health,” Spivey said.
Last week, Pike became the first person to survive two lethal injections as Tennessee failed to execute her for murdering her classmate three decades ago when she was just 18.
Doctors told NBC News it appeared most of the pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injections, went into her arm rather than her bloodstream, with enough force to put her to sleep but not to stop her heart from stopping or slow her breathing.
Pike, 50, had been unconscious and on a ventilator in the hospital for six days until her lawyer said Tuesday that she had woken up and was able to speak.
As of Monday evening, Spivey said it was his understanding that Pike was brain dead. He said the life support system should be removed on Tuesday.
“But on Tuesday, to everyone’s shock, including me, her team and the medical team, Krista woke up and started talking,” Spivey said. “I can’t explain what happened Monday night into Tuesday morning.”
Although Spivey said he was not in the room when Pike woke up, he said the first words she said were: “Where am I and who are you?”
Spivey said Pike was angry and confused and wanted to know what had happened to her. He said she asked about her team and the victim’s family.
Still, “she was well aware that the state was trying to execute her,” Spivey said.
Spivey said Pike cooperated during the execution and even helped the execution team find a good vein for her IV.
“They worked for an hour, and she was nice and polite, pricking her arm with needle after needle, and then she felt the burning sensation of pentobarbital, and then she woke up in the hospital surrounded by people she didn’t know and with a tube down her throat,” he said.
He added, “This was all foreseeable and foreseeable.”
“What happened to Krista is exactly what the state was warned was going to happen,” Spivey continued. Pike’s legal team had opposed the lethal injection on the grounds that Pike had problems with his veins that could cause problems with the lethal injection.
The news conference came after a status hearing in a Tennessee court on Wednesday in which Tennessee Gov. Iashe L. Myers ruled that the state must preserve any relevant evidence related to the failed execution.
“Today’s hearing is just the first step in upholding and enforcing Krista’s constitutional rights in the wake of this unprecedented botched execution,” Luke Ihnen, one of the attorneys, said at a news conference after court on Wednesday.
“As I have said repeatedly, we are not asking the state to turn over any evidence at this time,” he continued. “Just asking that they preserve it so her attorneys, experts and the public can understand what really happened Wednesday night.”
In court, Inan argued that “the state has not promised that Miss Pike will not be subject to execution by us in the future, and the evidence we now seek to preserve is relevant to any future challenge by her.”
Myers ultimately ruled in favor of Pike’s team, stating that the State of Tennessee must preserve all relevant evidence, including but not limited to: IV tubing and needles, medical supplies and records, any medications used with any medications provided by the manufacturer, photographs, video recordings, handwritten notes, checklists and any witness statements.
“The state will have no problem doing this because you’re all already doing it,” Myers said. If anything has been discarded, she said the state must work to “reclaim that information” and ensure no more information is discarded or destroyed in the future.
Additionally, Inan asked Myers to order the Tennessee Department of Corrections to give their team 48 hours notice before Pike is transferred so that her shackles can be removed while she lies in a hospital bed and she can be allowed to use her phone or tablet.
He also asked the legal team to visit Pike regularly, noting that when they tried to see him on Tuesday, they had to wait in the hospital lobby for two and a half hours.
Pike would be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. She spent more than 30 years on death row for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. It’s unclear what her future will look like or whether the state will try to execute her again.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee insisted in the hours after the Sept. 30 execution that the team, whose members were kept secret, followed the state’s rules well. But days later, he announced that the state’s top prison official, Frank Strada, would resign this month.
Strada said in a statement that he believed the state Department of Corrections performed its duties “according to established protocols.” But he added that withdrawing was in the “best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.”
Lee also ordered an independent review of the failed executions and suspended all executions in the state for the remainder of the year.
Pike’s lethal injection was the second failed lethal injection case in the state this year. Tony Carruthers’ execution in May was halted as the state Department of Corrections struggled to find a vein to set up a backup injection line.