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.
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The rule of law still matters. While it might feel logical that someone just take a scalpel to an artery after the injection failed, the law says it has to be done in a specific manner. Anything else is (legally) murder. And healthcare professionals also have an oath to fulfill.
What if someone truly is executed, literally dead and buried in the ground…but then I use necromancy to bring them back? They quite literally died for their crimes. I just…undid it. Are they free to go, having paid their debt to society?
There are some the cases that are a bit like that in history, like Half-hanged Maggie and Anne Greene, women who survived hanging, which probably gets the closest to that necromancy situation, in real life. Half-hanged Maggie was considered to have gone through her sentence by Scottish law, so she was let go (and had to remarry her husband, since she had legally died). Anne Greene’s execution was reprieved, but by English law she was not considered to have gone through the sentence. But in the end she was pardoned, as they believed it was God’s will that she lived.
That hasn’t been decided by the courts yet, probably due to the lack of a suitable test case.