Pike Walking

Christa Pike is walking around her hospital room. Eight days ago she survived two lethal injections in a botched execution in Tennessee, her lawyer said.

Pike, 50, received two doses of the sedative pentobarbital during her scheduled execution on September 30, the BBC reported. Prison staff could not get the drug to kill her. Unconscious and in critical condition, she was taken to the hospital, according to the BBC. The drug may have missed a vein, medical experts cited by the Guardian suggested, or one of her veins, flagged as problematic by her lawyers months earlier, failed.

Her arms are swollen and barely functional. But she took her first steps around the room this week, her lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, not very far," Ferrell said. Her mental state, he said, is "kind of good and bad." Lucid but foggy, she loses her train of thought easily, according to the BBC.

Pike cannot move either arm. She has pneumonia and a blood clot, another attorney, Randy Spivey, said Wednesday, the Guardian reported. One arm and her feet remain shackled to her hospital bed, her legal team said, the Guardian added.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she beat and tortured with then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp at a Knoxville job training camp. Shipp, 17 at the time, was spared execution because he was a minor. He remains in prison. "Mess" is how Slemmer's mother described the failed execution, the BBC reported.

A court has ordered Tennessee officials to preserve evidence from the attempt, which could support a future lawsuit, according to the BBC. Pike's legal team opposes a second attempt using the same method. They are asking Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole.

Lee has paused executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year, the Guardian reported. Elsewhere, they continue. On Wednesday, Texas executed Jamaal Howard by pentobarbital despite his lawyers citing Pike's case, the Guardian said. Donald Trump this week approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. December 3 is when Hasan is scheduled to be shot, according to the Guardian.

"Bring back the electric chair," Tennessee state Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican candidate for governor, said of lethal injection.