Christa Pike, who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug last week during a botched execution in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking, her lawyers said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ms. Pike continues to receive critical medical care at a Nashville hospital, the lawyers said. The prognosis remains unclear, they said, but they expect a long recovery.
“Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time,” the lawyers said.
Ms. Pike, 50, is believed to be the first person to have survived doses of a lethal injection drug. She has been hospitalized since the execution attempt on Sept. 30, after it became clear to witnesses that she was still breathing after two doses of pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injection executions.
She had been unconscious and on a ventilator in recent days as medical staff members worked to rid her body of the drug. The lawyers pointedly noted that Ms. Pike, who they said had sustained burns and other injuries to her arm, remained handcuffed and shackled to her bed.
Ms. Pike’s lawyers are set to appear in court in Nashville on Wednesday as they push for transparency and details about what went wrong.
Ms. Pike had been on death row for three decades after a conviction for her role in the 1995 torture and murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Ms. Pike’s lawyers have renewed their plea for Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to reconsider allowing her to serve the rest of her life in prison.
Ms. Pike’s medical condition is likely to determine whether Tennessee officials try to execute her again. The U.S. Supreme Court has forbidden the execution of someone who does not have a “rational understanding” of why they’re being put to death.
Mr. Lee, in the final months of his term as governor, put a moratorium on executions after the failed attempt with Ms. Pike, given that it was the second time this year that Tennessee had been unable to carry out a capital punishment.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Lee did not immediately respond to a question about whether he would grant Ms. Pike clemency.
But state Republicans — including Senator Marsha Blackburn, the front-runner in the governor’s race next month — have signaled a desire to press forward with executions using a different method. Ms. Blackburn has suggested the electric chair.
The failed attempt to execute Ms. Pike left potent questions about the secretive process of lethal injection in Tennessee and how transparent the state would be about what went wrong. The state’s Department of Correction has not answered questions about Ms. Pike’s condition beyond acknowledging her hospitalization last week.
“The whole judicial system is called into question, the way this happened and the way it’s being handled,” said David Raybin, a Nashville lawyer who helped write Tennessee’s death penalty law. The failure in Ms. Pike’s case, paired with the government’s secrecy, he said, is “eroding public confidence.”
Mr. Lee said on Saturday that he had tapped Ed Stanton, a former U.S. attorney, for an independent investigation.
At the hearing on Wednesday, Ms. Pike’s lawyers are expected to argue that a judge should order the state to preserve records related to the failed execution and that an expert should examine any residual amounts of chemicals, as well as syringes and intravenous lines, used in the execution.
The office of the Tennessee attorney general said in court filings on Tuesday that the request was “unnecessary and unreasonably cumulative because it targets evidence that must already be preserved.”
The prison agency and state officials, the office added, had “taken the necessary steps” to get Ms. Pike medical care and figure out what happened.
In a screenshot of an email included with the filings, an assistant attorney general wrote to Ms. Pike’s lawyers on Friday denying that the Department of Correction was controlling access to her in a private hospital and rejecting the request for independent testing.
In 1995, Ms. Pike was at a Knoxville educational program with Ms. Slemmer, a 19-year-old who had come to Tennessee from Florida to pursue her interest in computers. Ms. Pike, along with two other classmates, lured Ms. Slemmer into the woods, where they tortured and killed her.
Ms. Pike’s case became riddled with ethical complexities over decades of appeals and litigation. Her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, was also convicted in connection with Ms. Slemmer’s killing, but was spared the death penalty because he was 17. Ms. Pike was 18.
Ms. Pike would have been the first woman in more than 200 years to be executed in Tennessee. As the lone woman on death row for most of her time in prison, she was effectively in physical isolation for most of her life.
Her lawyers had argued against lethal injection, saying it would be particularly painful and traumatic given her history of childhood sexual trauma and medical conditions that led to smaller veins. Her request for hanging as the execution method, as well as her warnings over the lethal injection process, were dismissed in court and by the state.
The uncertainty of Ms. Pike’s fate have been particularly painful for both her loved ones and those who want to see capital punishment carried out. May Martinez, the mother of Ms. Slemmer, has said that she feels her family has been denied justice.
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