US death row inmate Christa Pike is “conscious and speaking” after surviving a failed execution attempt last week.
In a statement on Tuesday, her lawyers said Pike, 50, continues to receive critical medical care while handcuffed in hospital.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995, survived two failed lethal injection attempts last Wednesday in Tennessee.
She was taken to hospital, where she remained unconscious for days as medical staff worked to clear her body of the injected chemical.
Experts and her legal team say her apparent recovery is unprecedented, and she is believed to be the only person to survive a lethal injection.
Her lawyers called her progress “medically unprecedented”. While her prognosis remains unclear, they say they expect her to face a long recovery at a minimum.
Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, said she was “absolutely astonished” that Pike is conscious and speaking.
Denno told the BBC there were seven other cases in which prisoners survived scheduled executions, but in those cases, executioners were unable to inject any substance into the inmates’ veins.
She said Pike is the only person known to have survived after a lethal injection drug was successfully injected.
Denno said authorities followed the procedures they were supposed to follow as part of the execution process, but it simply did not work, adding that this had never happened before.
Authorities have not yet said whether they will attempt to execute Pike again. They have also not provided an explanation for what went wrong after she was injected with the chemical pentobarbital.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended all executions in the state for the rest of the year, while the head of the state’s prisons said over the weekend that he plans to resign.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers.
Pike’s attorneys are scheduled to appear in court in Nashville on Wednesday and also plan to hold a news conference outside the court.
Dr Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s defence team, said on Tuesday that the likelihood of recovering from a lethal injection is low.
