Christa Pike’s lawyers hold press conference after saying she is ‘conscious’ following execution attempt
Christa Pike’s lawyers are holding a press conference today after revealing last night that their client was “conscious and speaking” following last week’s botched execution attempt in Tennessee.
The 50-year old death row inmate is still receiving critical care in a hospital while “handcuffed and shackled to the bed”, her lawyers said on Tuesday, adding: “Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”
Speaking to the BBC, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s team said that she is able to communicate in a “basic way” but did not seem to remember last Wednesday’s execution attempt.
Her legal team will ask a court on at a hearing on Wednesday to require the Tennessee department of correction to preserve all “relevant physical, written and electronic evidence” related to the failed execution, court documents said.
The press conference is scheduled for noon ET.
Stay tuned as we bring you the latest live updates from the press conference.
Key events
The press conference hosted by Christa Pike’s lawyers will begin momentarily.
Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.
Ed Pilkington
In the modern era of the US death penalty, Tennessee has never executed a person who was 18 at the time of their offence – the youngest was 23. Over the past 50 years, the state sent seven men who were 18 when they committed murder to death row, but in each case the sentence was vacated.
Tadryl Shipp, Christa Pike’s accomplice, held a fascination with satanic imagery. It was he who carved a pentagram in the victim’s chest, sending the local media into a frenzy. Yet because he was 17 at the time, he was barred from execution under Tennessee law; today he is serving a life sentence and had his first, unsuccessful, parole hearing in October 2025.
Had Pike been 10 months younger, she too would have been legally protected from the execution chamber. As time has passed, experts in children’s brains development have come to recognize that 18 is but an arbitrary line in the sand; adolescents – whatever their specific age – are susceptible to impulsive behavior.
And then there’s gender. Some argue that the gender of the 45 women who are now held on death rows across the US is irrelevant to their eligibility for the ultimate punishment. But in Pike’s case, it seems all too pertinent, given the agonizing litany of sexual and physical abuse she endured throughout her childhood.
She was subjected to a bewildering array of abuse, including multiple rapes by three separate men and beatings by numerous relatives.
Age. Gender. Abuse. The ingredients are all there, Pike’s legal team argues in the clemency petition for her crime, terrible though it was, to be recast in a different light.
Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning following Christa Pike’s botched execution attempt.
Over the weekend, governor Bill Lee announced that Frank Strada, the department of correction commissioner, will leave his position in late October amid an independent investigation into Pike’s failed execution attempt.
Despite calling the case “deeply disturbing,” Lee told reporters last week: “So far as we know, the department of correction followed exactly the protocol that was outlined.” Meanwhile, Strada said that his resignation would “be in the best interests” of the state as the investigation goes underway.
Death penalty lawyers said that Strada oversaw five “botched” executions, with common threads including prolonged suffering among prisoners and questionable injection procedures.
On September 30, Christa Pike, who was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, survived two doses of pentobarbital, a sedatative.
Witnesses to the attempt to execute Pike described how they heard she was choking and struggling for an hour after receiving the first injection. She was then hospitalized after a second dose failed to kill her. In the hospital, she was put on a ventilator and had been in critical condition.
Speaking to the BBC, Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s team, said: “She has some memories of being in the hospital but no memory, I believe, of the execution attempt.”
Zivot added that Pike was able to remember her name but incorrectly guessed the current month as September.
Christa Pike’s lawyers hold press conference after saying she is ‘conscious’ following execution attempt
Christa Pike’s lawyers are holding a press conference today after revealing last night that their client was “conscious and speaking” following last week’s botched execution attempt in Tennessee.
The 50-year old death row inmate is still receiving critical care in a hospital while “handcuffed and shackled to the bed”, her lawyers said on Tuesday, adding: “Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”
Speaking to the BBC, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s team said that she is able to communicate in a “basic way” but did not seem to remember last Wednesday’s execution attempt.
Her legal team will ask a court on at a hearing on Wednesday to require the Tennessee department of correction to preserve all “relevant physical, written and electronic evidence” related to the failed execution, court documents said.
The press conference is scheduled for noon ET.
Stay tuned as we bring you the latest live updates from the press conference.
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