Christa Pike regains consciousness after botched Tennessee execution attempt

Convicted killer Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee's effort to execute her by lethal injection last week, foiling the state's first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries, has regained consciousness and is speaking, her lawyers said in a statement on Tuesday. Despite severe injuries to her arms from the insertion of intravenous lines during the attempted execution last Wednesday, Pike, 50, is "still handcuffed and shackled" to her hospital bed while she remains under medical care, her team of public defence attorneys wrote. "Her prognosis remains unclear, but at a minimum we expect a long recovery," the lawyers' statement said, adding that a court hearing on Pike's case was scheduled for Wednesday in Davidson County Chancery Court. Pike, sentenced to death for her role as a teenager in the torture-murder of a 19-year-old schoolmate Colleen Slemmer three decades ago, survived the botched execution attempt on the night of September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, the state capital. She has been hospitalised since then. Her lawyers said on Friday that their client remained unconscious, critically ill and hooked to a ventilator to breathe, as doc...