US death row inmate Christa Pike awake and speaking after failed execution, lawyers say

US death row inmate Christa Pike is "conscious and speaking" after surviving a failed execution attempt in Tennessee last week, her lawyers say.Pike, 50, continues to receive critical medical care while "handcuffed and shackled to the bed" in hospital, her lawyers said in a statement on Tuesday.Pike, who was sentenced to death after murdering Colleen Slemmer with her then-boyfriend 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. Pike is believed to be the only person to survive a lethal injection. Her lawyers said her prognosis remained unclear, but that "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 had been seven other cases where prisoners survived 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 t...