NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christa Pike has been discharged from a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, her lawyers said Saturday, 10 days after she survived an attempt at lethal injection.
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christa Pike has been discharged from a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, her lawyers said Saturday, 10 days after she survived an attempt at lethal injection.
She is back at Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, the primary prison for women in Tennessee, her lawyers said. As of Thursday, Pike had been walking with assistance, but still struggling with concentration and memory.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” her lawyers said in a statement. “She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”
Pike, 50, has spent three decades in the prison, largely in isolation, for the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate in Knoxville, Tennessee. On Sept. 30, she survived two doses of the drug pentobarbital, the second time this year that Tennessee has failed to carry out an execution.
Pike is the first person to have survived receiving doses of a drug during a lethal injection execution.
Her survival has gripped the nation and become a flash point in the debate over the death penalty at a moment when support for capital punishment is at its lowest in decades, according to a 2025 Gallup poll.
The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed that Pike had returned to the prison, but declined to offer additional details about her condition or treatment.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican in the final months of his term-limited tenure, had put a moratorium on executions for the remainder of the year while an independent investigation into Pike’s botched execution continues. Frank Strada, the head of the state’s prison system, said he would step down this month.
Pike’s lawyers have asked Lee to grant her clemency and allow her to spend the remainder of her life in prison.
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the front-runner to be elected governor in November, has said she believes Pike should face execution again. The office of the attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, has not said whether lawyers will ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to set another date.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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