Christa Pike Awake After Botched Execution, Living With Pain, Terror and Trauma

Eight days after she lived through two lethal doses of pentobarbital, Christa Pike is still in an unnamed Nashville hospital, and the picture her lawyers are painting is a strange mix of recovery and wreckage.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, her four person legal team released a statement to PEOPLE saying the physical rebound has been unlike anything they expected, while the damage underneath it is nowhere near settled. They said there are still “significant questions” about the long term effects of the failed execution on Sept. 30.

“Christa is dealing with the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution, including the terror, pain and uncertainty of believing she was about to die,” the statement said. “We cannot yet know the full emotional and psychological toll of that experience or how long it will take her to begin to heal.”

Her attorneys also said Pike keeps talking about other people, especially the family of Colleen Slemmer, the classmate she was convicted of killing in 1995. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, does not buy that. She has told PEOPLE that Pike has never once apologized for murdering her 19 year old daughter. After the attempt fell apart, Martinez said she could not understand how so much went wrong. People have rallied around Pike since then. Martinez has not. She still wants her daughter’s killer dead.

“She has no remorse. She’s never had any remorse in 31 years,” Martinez said.

On the body, the lawyers described real movement. They said Pike, 50, is now walking with some help. Her arms are healing and getting strength back. Her lungs are clear. She woke up unable to swallow, and she has since started eating a regular diet.

That turn came fast. She spent days unconscious. On Monday, Oct. 5, her attorneys were told she was brain dead and would be taken off life support. By Tuesday, Oct. 6, she was speaking.

Before that, the legal team had already said she was fighting pneumonia, had a blood clot in one arm, and had heavy swelling in both arms and hands. They allege the trouble started when staff could not get the IV lines in cleanly during the execution, and that the drug leaked into the tissue around the veins and tore up her arms.

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, a Tennessee judge ordered the state to hold onto evidence from the failed attempt, including needles, IV lines, the drugs, surveillance video, and communications. At that hearing, attorney Luke Ihnen told the court Pike was still handcuffed and shackled to the hospital bed even after medical staff objected. The judge asked for more medical evidence before deciding whether those restraints come off.

Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent review of what happened and has paused the rest of Tennessee’s executions for 2026. Pike’s death sentence is still in place. Whether the state will try to kill her again is not clear.