Washington (United States) (AFP) – The convicted US killer who survived a botched execution was walking around her hospital room though she was mentally “foggy,” her lawyer said in an interview broadcast Thursday. Pike, 50, had been considered brain dead following two lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital last Wednesday that failed to kill her. Doctors had been planning to remove life support on Tuesday when she unexpectedly woke up and started talking, her lawyers have said.
“She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, you know, not very far,” lawyer Stephen Ferrell told the BBC. “She’s also somewhat foggy. She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.” “There could be some permanent damage. We don’t know that yet,” said Ferrell, who has not personally seen Pike or spoken with her, but is getting updates from colleagues who have.
Pike was sentenced to death in the state of Tennessee for the murder of a classmate committed when she was a teenager. Since the botched execution, her lawyers have repeatedly called on Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison. Lee has suspended executions in Tennessee pending an independent investigation.
– ‘Uncharted waters’ –
Whether the state will eventually attempt to execute Pike again was not known. “We are very much in uncharted waters,” Ferrell said. Pike is the only inmate to ever survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI). Other cases of botched executions in the United States were because the procedure did not go according to plan, though those inmates ultimately died, according to DPI. There were seven executions that were halted when personnel were unable to set IV lines for the lethal injection.
On Wednesday, a court ordered Tennessee corrections officials to preserve all evidence related to Pike’s botched execution including medical supplies, waste, and audio and video recordings. Excluding Pike’s case, there have been 30 executions in the United States this year, all by lethal injection. The most recent was that of Jamaal Howard, who was put to death in Texas on Wednesday for killing a store clerk during a 2000 robbery.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place. The Pentagon said this week that President Donald Trump has approved the execution of Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people and wounded more than two dozen at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009. Hasan’s execution by firing squad, set for December 3, would be the first carried out by the US military since 1961.
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