Death row inmate and convicted murderess Christa Pike has been released from the hospital and returned to prison after surviving an execution attempt by the Tennessee Department of Correction.
As RedState reported, on September 30, the state tried to execute Pike by lethal injection for the 1995 torture and murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was administered two doses of pentobarbital, but both attempts were botched, requiring the Department of Correction to administer emergency medical assistance.
Christa Pike has been discharged from a Nashville hospital, her lawyers said on 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, Ms. 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.”
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The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed that Ms. Pike had returned to the prison, but declined to offer additional details about her condition or treatment.
The course of medical treatment for Ms. Pike in prison was not immediately clear.
Pike's attorneys are requesting Gov. Bill Lee (R) grant Pike clemency and commute her sentence to life in prison without parole. Pike has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, and her lawyers attempted to use these diagnoses as the reason behind the violent torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, in an effort to stay Pike's execution. The Supreme Court of the United States sided with the state of Tennessee and the execution was allowed to go forward, with these disastrous results.
According to the new reporting, a person named Randy Spivey has described Pike as expressing an "overwhelming confusion over what happened, as well as worry about her loved ones and Ms. Slemmer’s family."
Here are two questions that legacy media reporting on this case refuse to address: Pike is an admitted murderer who has received her due process under the law, was found guilty by a jury of her peers, and that guilty verdict was upheld on three appeals.
So, botched execution or no, when did Pike become the victim in this situation? And when will the Slemmer family ever get justice for the loss of their loved one who was robbed of the chance at a life?
Instead of these inconvenient truths being discussed, activists and anti-death penalty advocates prefer to fixate on the act of putting murderers to death, rather than the toll placed on families and our society when justice continues to be delayed.