Pike conscious and speaking after failed execution - lawyers

Let's go to the US, where the woman who survived two botched execution attempts by the state of Tennessee last week has woken up. Christa Pike was sentenced to death after murdering Colleen Slemmer when she was eighteen with her then seventeen-year-old boyfriend in nineteen ninety-five. Two lethal injections failed to kill her last week. Now she's restrained at her hands and feet in a hospital bed. Randy Spivey is one of her lawyers.

I was not in the room when she woke up, so I, I, I don't wanna speculate too much. What-- Our understanding was the first thing she said was, "Where am I and who are you?" Um, there's, there's still a lot of cognitive confusion, and so I will say that. Um, she, she has wanted to know what's happened, and she's asked about, um, several people. She's asked about her team, she's asked about, um, she's asked about the victim's family. Like, she is, um-- I think she is angry and confused about everything right now.

That's Randy Spivey. Let's go to Steve Footeman. He's a US-based correspondent. Morning again, Steve.

Good morning.

We were talking to you about this last week. This is an extraordinary case.

Yeah.

Her lawyers believe that she had been, that she was brain-dead and expected her to be taken off life support at any moment.

Yeah. Th-they expected, as you mentioned, they, they thought with the lethal injection that, uh, even though she was alive, that her brain would have been drastically affected, and they would, uh, basically ask for her to be taken off life support. But they said, uh, she suddenly woke, uh, the next day, began talking, didn't make a lot of sense initially, but she's beginning to understand what happened, remember things, and they're saying as, as each day goes by, the cognitive ability of her seems to increase. And a-again, th-this is the first known situation like this in the US. There have been attempts to put people to death via lethal injection, which, which have gone wrong, but they eventually work. You know, they take two or three, uh, uh, injections, they last a while. But this is the first known thing like this where someone was actually given the lethal injection and is now in a hospital. Sort of ironic. Initially, they were trying to put her to death the next day at the hospital. They were trying to keep her alive. So i-it's, it shows you the, the vast, uh, vast range of emotions that are involved with this, uh, attempted execution.

So what's gonna happen to her now?

Well, I'm sure her attorneys are going to ask that, uh, she be given a reprieve, that she, uh, be given maybe a life sentence. Uh, I think they may go to courts and suggest that what she's gone through is cruel and unusual punishment, which is not allowed under the US Constitution. I don't know how far they will get. It would seem just quite a, uh, quite a, uh, path to take where you try to put someone to death, it doesn't work, she survives, and then you do it again. Uh, so I don't know what's going to happen, but this is what I'm suspecting the lawyers are going to eventually do. Uh, whether th-this may go to the US Supreme Court eventually, I don't know. For the moment, her attorneys are asking that all the records, the,