US execution survivor released from hospital, returned to prison

Death row inmate Christa Pike was released from a US hospital on Saturday and sent back to prison, where ​she will continue receiving medical care following her botched execution ‌attempt in Tennessee, her attorneys said.

Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Centre, where she has ​been housed for more than 30 years, said attorneys ​Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services ⁠of Eastern Tennessee, and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason ​from the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender in a ​joint release.

Pike, sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, awoke “angry and confused” in the hospital this week with a long recuperation ahead after surviving ​the attempted execution on September 30, her lawyers said on ​Wednesday. They previously believed she could be brain-dead.

Pike, 50, had been taken from ‌the ⁠execution chamber to a Nashville hospital, unconscious, critically ill and with severe arm injuries after two injections failed to kill her at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

A Tennessee judge this week ordered ​state officials to ​preserve all ⁠evidence related to their failed attempt to execute her, a development one of her lawyers called the “first ​of many steps to preserve and enforce her ​constitutional rights.”

Tennessee ⁠Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the rest of the year while investigators look into the botched execution of ⁠Pike ​and a similar failure involving Tony Carruthers ​in May, when prison officials were unable to set up intravenous lines.