Christa Pike describes constant pain after failed Tennessee execution

Christa Pike said she remains in constant physical and psychological pain a month after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection.

In her first public statement since the September 30 execution attempt, dictated to her lawyers from a prison infirmary, Pike said she entered the execution chamber prepared to die but later awoke in a hospital “confused and in pain.”

“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said. “My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”

Pike, 50, survived after receiving two doses of pentobarbital. She was hospitalized unconscious and later returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she said she has been kept largely isolated in the medical ward. She thanked medical workers who saved her life and acknowledged the suffering of her victim’s family.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and killing of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time.

Her lawyers have asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment. Lee has ordered an investigation into the failed execution and postponed another lethal injection scheduled for this year, but said he expects Pike’s sentence to remain unchanged unless courts decide otherwise.

“I don’t know why I survived that night. I don’t know what comes next,” Pike said. “For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time.”