Christa Pike’s lawyers hold press conference after she regains consciousness in hospital – latest updates

Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning following Christa Pike’s botched execution attempt.

Over the weekend, governor Bill Lee announced that Frank Strada, the department of correction commissioner, will leave his position in late October amid an independent investigation into Pike’s failed execution attempt.

Despite calling the case “deeply disturbing,” Lee told reporters last week: “So far as we know, the department of correction followed exactly the protocol that was outlined.” Meanwhile, Strada said that his resignation would “be in the best interests” of the state as the investigation goes underway.

Death penalty lawyers said that Strada oversaw five “botched” executions, with common threads including prolonged suffering among prisoners and questionable injection procedures.

On September 30, Christa Pike, who was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, survived two doses of pentobarbital, a sedatative.

Witnesses to the attempt to execute Pike described how they heard she was choking and struggling for an hour after receiving the first injection. She was then hospitalized after a second dose failed to kill her. In the hospital, she was put on a ventilator and had been in critical condition.

Speaking to the BBC, Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s team, said: “She has some memories of being in the hospital but no memory, I believe, of the execution attempt.”

Zivot added that Pike was able to remember her name but incorrectly guessed the current month as September.

Christa Pike’s lawyers are holding a press conference today after revealing last night that their client was “conscious and speaking” following last week’s botched execution attempt in Tennessee.

The 50-year old death row inmate is still receiving critical care in a hospital while “handcuffed and shackled to the bed,” her lawyers said on Tuesday, adding: “Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”

Speaking to the BBC, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s team said that she is able to communicate in a “basic way” but did not seem to remember last Wednesday’s execution attempt.

Her legal team will ask a court on at a hearing on Wednesday to require the Tennessee department of correction to preserve all “relevant physical, written and electronic evidence” related to the failed execution, court documents said.

The press conference is scheduled for 12pm ET.

Stay tuned as we bring you the latest live updates from the press conference.