Pike Conscious

Christa Pike is conscious and talking, her attorneys said Tuesday.

The Tennessee death row inmate, 50, survived two attempts to execute her last week. Pike was injected with two doses of the sedative pentobarbital on Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, CBS News reported. She never lost consciousness. Her heart was still beating when the execution team stopped, media witnesses said. One witness heard her snoring loudly about an hour into the procedure, according to CBS News.

Most of the pentobarbital spread into the tissue of her arm instead of her bloodstream, doctors told NBC News. That gave her enough sedative to sleep but not enough to stop her heart. Pike's lawyers had warned before the execution that a blood-clotting condition called thrombocytosis could keep the drug from reaching her veins, the BBC reported. Prison staff tried at least seven needles to set an IV line, her attorneys said.

Gov. Bill Lee ordered an independent review of the execution. He halted every other execution scheduled for the rest of the year, the BBC reported. Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada resigned afterward, NPR reported.

Pike has a blood clot in one arm, pneumonia, no function in her arms and trouble swallowing, attorney Randy Spivey told reporters Wednesday, according to NBC News. He said he was told Monday night that Pike was brain-dead and that doctors planned to remove life support Tuesday. She woke instead. Pike began speaking that morning, Spivey said.

Nashville Chancellor I'Ashea Myles ruled Wednesday that the state must preserve all evidence from the execution, including log books, IV needles and medical records, NPR and NBC News reported. Attorney Luke Ihnen called the failed execution "unprecedented." Trying to execute Pike again, he said, would be "unconscionable." Tennessee Assistant Attorney General John Ayers told the hearing that the state Supreme Court, not his office, will decide whether to schedule a new execution date, NPR reported.

Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old she met at a summer camp for troubled teens, the BBC reported. She was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend killed Slemmer and 20 when she was sentenced. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in roughly two centuries, CBS News reported.

"All of this was foreseen," Spivey said.