US death row inmate Christa Pike is “conscious and speaking” after surviving a failed execution attempt last week, her lawyers say.

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Pike, 50, continues to receive critical medical care while handcuffed in hospital, her attorneys said in a statement on Tuesday.

Pike, who was sentenced to death after murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995, survived two failed lethal injections last Wednesday in Tennessee. She was taken to hospital, where she remained unconscious for days as medical staff cleared her body of the injected chemical.

Experts and her legal team say her apparent recovery is unprecedented. She is believed to be the only person to survive a lethal injection.

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Her lawyers said her prognosis remained unclear, “at a minimum, we expect a long recovery”.

Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, said she was “absolutely astonished” that Pike was conscious and speaking.

There were seven other cases where prisoners survived slated executions, but in those cases, executioners were not able to inject anything into the inmates’ veins, Denno told the BBC.

Pike “is the only person for whom some kind of toxin has been injected,” she said.

“They did everything they were supposed to do as part of the execution process, and it simply didn’t work,” Denno said. “This has never happened before.”

Authorities have not yet said whether they will try again to execute Pike. They have also not offered an explanation for what went wrong after injecting her with the chemical pentobarbital.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya