Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of a classmate in 1995, survived two lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital on September 30.
After the attempted execution, she was taken unconscious to hospital, where she was put on a ventilator. She regained consciousness six days later. On Wednesday, her lawyers said she had pneumonia and a blood clot in one arm. Her hands were also reportedly very swollen.
“She is up and walking for the first time today, but only in the room and not very far,” lawyer Stephen Ferrell told the BBC on Wednesday evening.
Psychological support
Pike is still reportedly “mentally foggy,” and her arms are essentially useless.
No one knows how her health will develop.
“I think the situation will continue to improve, but there could be permanent damage. We don’t know yet,” Ferrell said.
He said a request had been made for Christa Pike to receive psychological support.
Known to be difficult to draw blood from
It was reportedly well known that routine blood tests were difficult to perform on Pike because she has a condition that makes it difficult to draw blood from her, according to the New York Times. She therefore reportedly asked to be executed by hanging. Despite this, the US Supreme Court rejected her request for an alternative method of execution.
During the attempted execution, several attempts were made to administer pentobarbital through an IV before it leaked into the tissue in her arm instead of entering the bloodstream, and the execution was ultimately aborted. Pike was still alive and was taken to hospital with burns to her arms, among other injuries.
Her lawyers are now seeking to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment without parole.
