Attorneys say Pike was set to be taken off life support before she woke up, as judge orders officials to preserve evidence
Christa Pike awoke “angry and confused” after surviving two lethal injections, her attorneys said on Wednesday, as a judge ordered Tennessee state officials to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution.
Pike, 50, was taken to hospital unconscious but alive from Tennessee’s execution chamber last Wednesday after two supposedly lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital.
She was declared brain dead on Monday, her attorneys said, and her team was informed of plans to remove her from life support the next day. “But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone … Christa woke up and began talking,” Randy Spivey, one of her lawyers, said at a press conference on Wednesday. He was told her first words were “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”