In the United States, death-row inmate Christa Pike was in critical condition and receiving "life-saving medical care" at a Nashville hospital on Thursday, October 1, several hours after surviving two attempts by the state of Tennessee to execute her by lethal injection. Her attorneys said this, UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Details
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in the 1990s after being found guilty of a murder she committed as a teenager. Her botched execution on Wednesday at the maximum-security Riverbend facility—the second in Tennessee this year—highlights the difficulties U.S. states face in carrying out lethal injections and finding suitable alternative methods of execution, the publication writes.
"Christa is alive right now," Randall Spivey, one of Pike's attorneys who witnessed the execution attempt, told reporters on Thursday afternoon, October 1, local time. "At this point, we have no information about her prognosis or any updated information about her medical condition, but we know that she is alive right now," he said.
Her attorneys renewed their calls for Pike's sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment after she survived what they called "chemical torture." Tennessee has suspended all executions through the end of the year while it investigates the incident.
Execution in Tennessee halted after failed injection of Christa Pike01.10.26, 20:47