Christa Pike discharged from hospital to jail after surviving botched execution

Christa Pike, who is believed to be the first person to have survived an execution by lethal injection in the US, has been discharged from hospital.

The convicted murderer was supposed to be put to death in Tennessee on Wednesday 30 September but survived two botched attempts.

The 50-year-old was given two doses of pentobarbital, a lethal drug used by the US state in executions.

Pike's lawyers said her recovery in hospital was "medically unprecedented". Now she has been discharged to the women's prison in Nashville, Tennessee, where she had been held for decades.

Pike's attorneys said in a statement today: "Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years."

"She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances," the lawyers - Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the Office of the Post Conviction Defender - added.

"She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery."

On Tuesday, they revealed she was conscious and speaking, nearly a week after the failed execution.

In a court filing, they had said that problems with IV lines had caused the barbiturate pentobarbital to go into her body, instead of her bloodstream, during the execution attempt.

She had been taken to the hospital in Nashville where her lawyers previously said she was in a "critical condition" and on a ventilator.

Pike was set to be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee for more than 200 years after being convicted of killing her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

She had been granted a reprieve around an hour before her initial execution was scheduled to take place, but the decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court.

Frank Strada, commissioner of Tennessee's Department of Correction, has announced he will step down this month while an independent review determines what happened, state governor Bill Lee said last Saturday.

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