Christa Pike’s Lawyer Paints A Mixed Picture Of Recovery After Botched Execution

Convicted murderer Christa Pike was “up and walking” for the first time on Wednesday, a week after she survived multiple rounds of lethal injections in a Tennessee prison. 

Pike, who brutally tortured and murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, has been in the hospital since September 30 after officials botched her scheduled execution. Her lawyer Stephen Ferrell told the BBC on Wednesday that Pike was doing “fairly well.” 

“What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” he said. “She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, not very far.”

The lawyer added that Pike was still “foggy.” 

“I think it’s kind of good and bad. Good that she is fairly with it, but she’s also somewhat foggy. She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.”

Ferrell’s comments about Pike moving around the hospital room come after he said earlier this week that she was “handcuffed and shackled to the bed.”

Pike and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp were convicted in 1996 of killing Slemmer after inviting her out into the woods near Knoxville, where they slit her throat and struck her with a meat cleaver and a piece of asphalt. They also carved a pentagram into her forehead and chest, according to court documents. Pike also kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull and bragged about the killing.  

May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, said that she did not “get justice for my daughter” after Pike’s execution failed. She said that Pike never apologized for her horrific actions. 

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Martinez told WBIR when asked if she thought Pike would ever be executed. “They’re going to do what they’re going to do.”

After the botched execution, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee paused all executions in Tennessee until the end of the year and ordered an investigation into what went wrong. In the meantime, Pike’s lawyers want the state to keep all the evidence from the execution for any future challenges. 

“The state has made no promises that Miss Pike will not be subject to our future execution, and the evidence that we are seeking to preserve now is relevant for any future challenge that she makes,” attorney Luke Ihnen argued.

Nashville Chancellor I’Ashea Myles directed the state on Wednesday to keep all the evidence. 

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is running for governor, has called for Tennessee to move away from lethal injection and start using the electric chair as the primary method of execution.

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