Christa Pike returns to prison after failed execution

THE US DEATH row inmate who survived a botched execution attempt in the US state of Tennessee has been discharged from hospital and returned to prison, her lawyers have said

“Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and… is continuing to receive medical care at the prison,” a statement by her lawyers Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason said.

Pike (50) survived after executioners tried to give her two lethal doses of phenobarbital on 30 September.

She was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of her classmate Colleen Slemmer.

Ferrell said on Thursday that Pike was walking around her hospital room though she was mentally “foggy”. 

Doctors had been planning to remove life support on Tuesday when she unexpectedly woke up and started talking. 

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Pike is the only inmate ever to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI).

Since the botched execution, her lawyers have repeatedly called on Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison.

Lee has suspended executions in Tennessee pending an independent investigation.

On Wednesday, a court ordered Tennessee corrections officials to preserve all evidence related to Pike’s botched execution, including medical supplies, waste and audio and video recordings.

Excluding Pike’s case, there have been 30 executions in the United States this year, all by lethal injection.

The Pentagon said this week that President Donald Trump has approved the execution of Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people and wounded more than two dozen at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009.

Hasan’s execution by firing squad, set for 3 December, would be the first carried out by the US military since 1961.