Christa Pike is "up and walking" for the first time since emerging from a week-long coma, but her lawyer fears she could face the electric chair. The 50-year-old death row killer has no memory of her botched execution after state officials jabbed her at least seven times with needles, leaving her with severe arm damage and potential permanent brain injuries.
Condition after botched lethal injection
Pike was scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 30, which would have made her the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. Instead, she was left in critical condition after being injected with two separate doses of pentobarbital. Her legal team has now spoken out on her physical and mental state as she remains handcuffed to a hospital bed.
Speaking to the BBC, her attorney Stephen Ferrell said: "She is fairly well. Physically there is quite a bit going on that her arms are very injured and she is not able to use them very much. She is up and walking for the first time today but just around the room - not very far."
Mental state and possible permanent damage
Describing the toll the botched execution attempt has taken on her mind, Ferrell added: "Mentally, which I think is the biggest part, it is kind of good and bad. Good that she is fairly with it but she is also somewhat foggy."
"She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she is going. She is back, she is alive and we are happy about that but she is not mentally completely recovered. I assume it will keep improving but there could be some permanent damage."
Political pressure for electric chair
Tennessee is set to elect a new Governor in November and the winner is expected to have a big say on Pike's fate. Polls currently have Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn as the favourite to succeed her party colleague Bill Lee, who will have reached his limit at the end of his second term.
Ms Blackburn said on the Pike case, "while there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly."
Legal battle and clemency plea
Pike has spent 30 years behind bars for the gruesome 1995 murder of her 19-year-old college classmate Colleen Slemmer. Slemmer was tortured, bludgeoned, carved with a pentagram, and Pike even kept a piece of her skull as a souvenir. Despite her crimes, Pike's legal team are demanding mercy from state officials.
Ferrell said: "There should be clemency - a commutation from the death sentence to life without parole. Given her history, given she was only 18 at the time with bi-polar disorder and suffering from a long history of sexual abuse, we feel that would be a just sentence. It is more severe than her co-defendant."
Governor Bill Lee has since ordered a full investigation into the fiasco and halted all state executions for the remainder of 2026. However, Pike's lawyers are mounting a legal battle as local politics threaten to send her to the electric chair.
Ferrell said: "The plan is something that we have talked about what we might do. I am certainly not going to talk about our theories at this time because in a lot of ways they are just theories."
"We have got to do our research and we have got to know what the state of Tennessee plans to do but we are certainly going to fight to prevent this happening again. The governor has ordered an investigation and also ordered no executions are carried out this year. Politics are part of everything here."
"Our current governor is going to be finishing his first term somewhere in early January and a new governor will take his place. That new governor, the polls right now have it being the Republican candidate who has indicated it should be the electric chair."
