Pike case: Hearing canceled as lawyers report progress in her recovery
A Nashville court has removed Friday's hearing in Christa Pike's case from its docket. Her lawyers say the 50-year-old can now walk on her own and speak in full sentences.
Symbolic image · Photo: euthman / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
A chancery court in Nashville has removed from its docket a hearing set for Friday, Oct. 23, in death row inmate Christa Pike's case against Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. The judge's order, reported by Fox 17, cites good cause but does not say what it was. Still pending is the state's motion asking for a deadline for Pike's lawyers to amend their complaint. Both sides waived oral argument, and the court will now rule on the filings.
Pike survived an execution attempt on Sept. 30 in which she was given two doses of pentobarbital. She was hospitalized unconscious and on a ventilator, and, according to her lawyers, was discharged on Oct. 10 and returned to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women's prison where she is held. Her lawyers say the 50-year-old can now walk unassisted and speak in full sentences, as first reported by TMZ. WSMV carried the report; the claims have not been independently confirmed. The state has not said whether it plans another execution attempt.
Gov. Bill Lee has paused the state's remaining executions this year, and an independent review led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton is under way. WSMV says decisions on future executions are more likely to fall to Lee's successor, who will be elected in November. Pike was convicted in 1996 of the 1995 murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. She is the only woman on Tennessee's death row.