Christa Pike Back in Prison After Being Discharged From Hospital

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Christa Pike has been discharged from the hospital and returned to the women’s prison in Nashville where she was incarcerated for more than 30 years before her failed execution.

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“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” Pike’s legal team said in a release to media Saturday morning. “She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery."

Pike, 50, was rushed to the hospital after 9 p.m. on Sept. 30 when she survived two rounds of lethal injection in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. She was sentenced to death in 1996 for her part in the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer at a Knoxville job training program when both were still teenagers. The case had already attracted outsize media attention for years before Pike’s botched execution and what her attorneys have called a “medically unprecedented” survival made her story international news. 

In the wake of the failed lethal injection, Gov. Bill Lee has put a moratorium on executions this year to allow for a review of the state’s protocols. Pike’s attorneys have repeatedly called on him to commute her sentence to life without the possibility of parole.