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Tennessee officials are hitting back at Christa Pike’s brazen demand to be transferred into a cushy, low-security prison unit while recovering from her botched execution, newly filed court records reveal.
The 50-year-old convicted murder “thinks she knows better than her treating providers and [Tennessee Department of Corrections] officials about how to treat her medical needs while keeping her safe and secure,” state attorneys blasted in the docs, which were filed in federal court on Wednesday.
The fiery remarks were in response to an emergency order filed by Pike’s legal team on Oct. 30, which sought to have her removed from the lockups’s infirmary ward and released back into a specialized, low-security unit with other inmates – despite Pike’s apparently well-earned status as a maximum-security prisoner.
“She once tried to murder another inmate and was disciplined for an escape attempt. She therefore cannot pick and choose any housing assignment,” the state’s response read.
“It should come as no surprise that maximum-security inmates cannot be allowed to roam a separate DJRC housing area that essentially operates as a nursing home.”
Pike, who was poised to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years, spent days unconscious and in critical condition after surviving two doses of pentobarbital allegedly administered with at least 10 needles during the botched lethal injection on Sept. 30.
After spending several days in the hospital, she was transferred to the prison’s infirmary on Oct. 9 – where she continues to require “round-the-clock care” today, attorneys for TDOC wrote in the new filings.
“Pike’s medical needs require the most intense level of care available,” which can only be found in the infirmary, the state lawyers wrote, and asked the judge to deny Pike’s request for transfer.
