Christa Pike released from hospital, back in prison following botched execution in Tennessee, lawyers say

Updated on: October 10, 2026 / 12:07 PM EDT / CBS News

Christa Pike, the woman whose execution by lethal injection was botched last month in Tennessee, has been released from the hospital and is now back in prison, according to her lawyers.

She has been transferred back to Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, where she had been held before her planned execution on Sept. 30.

"Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years," her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement Saturday. "She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery."

Pike, 50, was given two doses of a lethal injection drug, but her legal team confirmed shortly after the failed procedure that, in an unprecedented turn, she was alive and had been hospitalized. One witness, a media attendee, noted she could be heard loudly snoring about one hour after the procedure had started.

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/