Christa Pike Suffering Psychological Trauma After Botched Execution, Lawyers Say

Deven (0:08)

Welcome to The TMZ Podcast. Deven here with the one and only Tony.

Tony (0:12)

How are you doing, Deven?

Deven (0:13)

Good. So you're just doing everything, man.

Tony (0:14)

I guess so.

Deven (0:15)

Branson's not in this room.

Tony (0:17)

Yeah.

Deven (0:17)

Like it's a skeleton crew.

Tony (0:19)

It is, but as I always say, we make it work, we're getting there.

Deven (0:22)

The show goes on.

Tony (0:23)

You know it.

Deven (0:23)

You guys need the story.

Tony (0:24)

Yeah. We got the story. We got some interesting ones. We got a really popular one, I would say over the past couple weeks. It's Christa Pike's story. I think it's gonna keep ballooning and ballooning, and her lawyers are speaking out.

Deven (0:36)

Yeah, so we'll start with an update on her condition, which is kind of shocking, to be honest, thinking that it's been just a week has gone by where she was sentenced to death and lived. Then we'll get into, which I actually think is the craziest story that I've seen in a while, but Pete Hegseth apparently wants the execution of a former army major who was involved in a shooting. He's being sentenced to death, and he wants to have it live stream for everyone to see.

So that's where we're at in this country. And then finally, we will send you into the weekend on a little, I guess it's not positive, but Taylor Sturgeon and Travis Kelsey are-

Tony (1:24)

Yeah, I guess controversial.

Deven (1:25)

Controversial, another controversy in Ohio with Taylor and Travis and their neighbor.

Tony (1:30)

Yes.

Deven (1:30)

So we'll get into that at the end. Okay, for starters, so everyone knows the Christa Pike story. We've talked about it all week. They botched the execution. So her attorney, her legal team was able to meet with her yesterday, and they released a whole press release.

And the gist of it is really that her physical recovery has been pretty remarkable. Which is crazy that she was sentencing that.

Tony (1:53)

Isn't it like a miracle? It's a miracle, like I think, medically speaking, that she survived for this.

Deven (1:58)

Oh, totally.

Tony (1:58)

From all these, yeah.

Deven (2:00)

And so reportedly, she is eating a regular diet. Her lungs are clear, and she's experienced a loss of movement in her arms and hands.

But what they were saying is that she is, I guess she was able to somewhat move yesterday. I don't know if it was, it's remarkable that a week out, she's already recovered this way physically. But the lawyers are saying that there's gonna be cognitive difficulties, particularly, I guess, her memory, her concentration, and they obviously have no idea what the long-term effects are gonna be on her, I guess, cognitively from this. It seems like she may have a full recovery physically, which is just nuts.

Tony (2:43)

Yeah.

Deven (2:45)

And yeah, I mean, if she's eating now and the lungs are clear, yeah. So I mean, obviously, she had those significant injuries to her hands from the swelling when it didn't work. So I'm assuming that they were explaining that it was like when you blow up a surgical glove, that's how her hands expanded, which is terrifying.

So yeah, it's kind of like basically they're saying, it looks like she's gonna have a full physical recovery. Mentally, we don't know yet.

Tony (3:14)

It's too early. Didn't they say that she is angry and confused? That makes me wonder, like, does she have some recollection, like before, like when the whole thing? Like what does she remember? What does she remember?

Deven (3:28)

No, they don't get into too much of that. I know I saw her first words were like, who are you? And like, where am I? So, I mean, obviously only time will tell.

Tony (3:39)

And her lawyers want her sentence commuted to life without the possible.

Deven (3:42)

Yeah, they want her to just live the rest of her life in prison once she recovers. It's not like they want to get her out, but they want the death sentence off the table.

Tony (3:51)

So, if that does happen, what do you think? So, if that does happen, Colleen Slumber's family, and I feel like a lot of people in the country are gonna be really ticked off that that's the case because of why she was sentenced to death. And I'm just wondering, like what, if that does happen, what's gonna be the fallout from that?

Deven (4:09)

I mean, Tony, you know how it goes. Nowadays, people are upset about everything. So if they commute her sentence to just life in prison, yeah, I'm sure there are gonna be people upset, like, oh, she did this heinous crime, the family might be upset. There's also the side of like, oh, so we're just gonna basically, the taxpayer dollars are gonna pay for her to live in prison when she was commuted to prison.