The convicted murderer who survived a botched execution attempt in the US state of Tennessee last week has been discharged from hospital and returned to prison, her lawyers said. Christa Pike, 50, was administered two lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital on September 30 that failed to kill her.

Christa Pike's botched execution in Tennessee was not the first to go wrong on Frank Strada's watch. Before he took charge of Tennessee's prisons, Strada oversaw three botched executions in Arizona.

When Christa Pike was sentenced to die in 1996 after being convicted of murdering a classmate, Tennessee was among 37 states that had capital punishment, and the number of annual executions in the U.S. was on the rise. Since then, 10 states have abolished capital punishment, and executions haven't approached their late 1990s peak.

Christa Pike's situation has similarities to a 1947 Supreme Court case.

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