Christa Pike 'conscious and speaking' after failed execution, Tennessee court holds hearing

Randy Spivey, an attorney for Christa Pike, a death row prisoner who survived a botched execution, speaks to the media, flanked by Luke Ihnen, after a Tennessee court was presented a status update on Pike, outside a courtroom in Nashville, Tennessee, US, October 7, 2026. {Reuters/Seth Herald)

Attorneys for the Tennessee woman who survived two attempted lethal injections last week said they had not expected her to recover before she woke up and started talking.

Speaking with reporters outside a Davidson County courthouse after they were granted an emergency motion to preserve evidence connected to the botched procedure that left her unconscious for nearly a week, Randy Spivey, an attorney with Tennessee's Office of the Post Conviction Defender, said Christa Pike's team thought she was "brain dead" as of Monday evening and that they expected her to be removed from life support Tuesday.

Then she unexpectedly regained consciousness.

"To the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking," he said. "I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning, but what we do know is that Christa has a long road to recovery."

She has a blood clot in one arm, developed pneumonia and is unable to swallow, he said, adding that it remains unclear whether she will ever regain the use of her arms.

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"Her hands looked like if you were to blow up a surgical glove," he said.

Fellow Pike attorney Luke Ihnen said her legal team had filed the emergency motion to preserve evidence because she was unconscious until Tuesday and unable to request any new litigation.

According to Spivey, who said he was not in the room when she woke up, his understanding is that the first thing she said was, "Where am I?" and "Who are you?"

The next steps for Pike are not immediately clear. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted executions for the rest of 2026, and Assistant Attorney General Will Ayers declined to say in court Wednesday whether the state would seek another death warrant.

"She survived child sexual abuse. She survived rapes of multiple men. She survived a suicide attempt when she was 12, and she survived the state's attempt to execute her," Spivey said "She deserves answers about what was done to her, and the people of Tennessee deserve those answers, too."

Chancery Court Judge I'Ashea Myles speaks in court during a hearing on Christa Pike's botched execution on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.(WZTV/Pool)

Chancery Court Judge I'Ashea Myles has granted a motion from Christa Pike's lawyers to preserve evidence connected to her botched execution attempt on Sept. 30.

"This case is unique, to say the least," Myles said after oral arguments. "I am quite sure that, at least in the procedural posture that, the parties and this court find themselves, it was not something that could have been anticipated. In light of the evolving situation, the court will pin and grant its own order granting the motion to preserve relevant evidence."

She specifically called for text messages and encrypted communications in apps like Signal preserved, in addition to physical evidence like needles, drugs, IV lines and more.

Other items include packaging labels, calls for first responders, photos, video and audio recordings — and she asked to the Tennessee Department of Correction to try and "claw back" any evidence that has also been disposed of.

"To any extent that any information has already been, any information or any evidence has already been discarded, deleted, destroyed or no longer exists, I want TDOC to take an affirmative step, to try to claw back that information," she said.

Assistant Tennessee Attorney General Will Ayers argues in court during a hearing on Christa Pike's botched execution attempt on Wednesday, October 7, 2026.(WZTV/Pool)

Christa Pike's attorneys are asking a Tennessee judge to order state correction officials to preserve evidence connected to her botched execution a week after she survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital.

"We don't know what they have, because they won't tell us," Pike's attorney Luke Ihnen, from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, told the court.

Pike's legal team filed the emergency motion Friday asking for the court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) "to protect and preserve any and all evidence related to TDOC's botched attempted execution of Ms. Pike on September 30, 2026."

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Pike's lawyers had warned for months that her veins were unsuitable for lethal injection due to "small veins" and a blood-clotting condition called thrombocytosis, and she had requested an alternate means of execution.

Assistant Tennessee Attorney General Will Ayers countered that an order would be "premature" and said TDOC is already subject to a separate federal court order on the preservation of evidence.

Chancery Court Judge I'Ashea Myles kicked off the hearing asking about a jurisdictional issue before taking up an emergency motion filed by Christa Pike's attorneys asking for evidence connected to last week's botched execution attempts to be preserved.

Pike's lawyers and prosecutors agreed that Myles' court retains jurisdiction over the case, even though it had appeared "closed" on the docket.

Myles reopened the case from the bench and allowed arguments to begin on Pike's pending emergency motion to preserve evidence.

Pike spent almost a week hospitalized and unconscious after two failed attempts to administer lethal injections.

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She had been convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.

Christa Gail Pike appears remotely from Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation for her hearing in Knox County Criminal Court in Knoxville, Tenn., on Aug. 11, 2026. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)

Christa Pike did not recall what happened to her during last week's botched execution attempt in Tennessee, a doctor working for her legal team told the BBC Wednesday.

"She has some memories of being in the hospital but no memory, I believe, of the execution attempt," Dr. Joel Zivot told the outlet.

She knew her name and did not realize that she had been unconscious long enough for the calendar to flip over to a new month, he said.

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Pike's lawyer called her awakening "medically unprecedented" in a statement Tuesday evening after she regained consciousness.

"She survived two complete rounds of lethal injection per Tennessee’s protocol, despite her attorneys’ warning to the state of specific challenges with her veins," her lawyers said in the statement. "She is the only person known to have survived a complete execution attempt in the U.S."

A status conference has been scheduled for Pike's case Wednesday after her attorneys filed a motion seeking to have evidence connected to the failed execution attempt preserved.

Colleen Slemmer, the victim, was 19 years old in 1995 when Christa Pike and two others lured her out to a park, tortured and killed her. (Reuters)

Christa Pike, a condemned woman on Tennessee's death row, has made a "medically unprecedented" recovery nearly a week after the state failed two attempts to lethally inject her, her attorneys said in a statement Tuesday evening.

"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care," attorneys Randy Spivey, Kelly Gleason, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen announced after she regained consciousness. "Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed."

They said they expect a lengthy recovery.

The Davidson County Chancery Court is holding a hearing on the matter at 11 a.m. CT Wednesday, and her attorneys are expected to give a news briefing afterward.

Pike was one of three people involved in the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old student at Knoxville's Job Corps Center, a vocational school where she was studying computers.

Pike, her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend named Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to a park and attacked her with knives and rocks. She was tortured for an hour, slashed repeatedly, and then they crushed her head and carved pentagrams into her flesh.

Only Pike was sentenced to death.

Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was not eligible for the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison. His next parole hearing is scheduled for October 2031.

Peterson took a plea deal and testified against the other two.