A woman is in critical condition, her prognosis unknown, after her botched execution in the United States (lawyer)

The condemned woman who survived two lethal injections in Tennessee, Christa Pike, was still in critical condition and on life support, with her prognosis still unknown, one of her lawyers, Stephen Ferrell, told CNN on Sunday.

The botched execution Wednesday night of Christa Pike, who was to be the first woman put to death in over 200 years in Tennessee (south), has reignited questions about the application of the death penalty in the United States.

"She is still hospitalized, on a ventilator and in critical condition. We don't yet really know her prognosis and we may not know it for several days," the lawyer said.

Stephen Ferrell said he was unable to visit his 50-year-old client in the hospital where doctors are still trying to remove the two doses of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, that were administered to her from her body.

Mr. Ferrell again called on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute his sentence.

"At the very least, the governor should commute Ms. Pike's sentence to life imprisonment," he said, believing that she suffered "severe mental and physical torture" as a result of the botched execution.

The governor, who on Thursday ordered a suspension of executions in the state and an independent investigation into the failed execution of Christa Pike, announced on Saturday that he had accepted the resignation of the head of the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC).

The prison administration asserted that it had strictly followed the protocol adopted since the resumption of executions in the state in May 2025, after a three-year moratorium. The governor had decreed this moratorium at the time due to deficiencies in the verification of the lethal solution administered to condemned prisoners.

The specialist observatory Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) denounced on Thursday "a botched execution without comparison in modern times", emphasizing that Christa Pike is "the first person to survive the injection of lethal doses of substances used for executions".

Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, when she herself was 18. Her two accomplices, also teenagers, escaped the death penalty.