'I prepared to die': Christa Pike tears into 'shocking incompetence' behind botched execution
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: Christa Pike has finally described, in her own words, a month of constant pain and isolation since Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her.
In a statement released through her attorneys Friday, October 30, the 50-year-old said she walked into the death chamber at peace, only to wake alone in a hospital days later.
Her statement comes as questions surrounding the failed execution and her legal fate continue.
Christa Pike finally breaks silence
Pike wrote that on September 30 she entered the chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution “prepared to die.”
She said she had made peace with her fate, thanked the people who had stood by her over the years and told witnesses she was leaving them in “loving kindness.”
What followed, she said, was very different.
“Several days later I woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain,” she wrote.
She said the pain has not let up since, reaching her arms, hands and throat, and that she still struggles to speak.
The suffering is not only physical, she added, saying it also lives “in my mind and in my soul.”
She described her recovery as real but incomplete, saying, “healing is not the same as being okay.”
Pike also voiced anger over how the state handled the execution attempt, saying she was “deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.”
She said she continues to think about her victim’s family and the pain and loss they have endured.
Since the failed execution, she has been largely isolated in the prison's medical ward.
She compared the experience to her past, saying, “I spent 28 years in solitary confinement and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition.”
She thanked the first responders, doctors and nurses who treated her with “compassion, dignity and respect,” along with her attorneys and the strangers who sent prayers.
She ended on an uncertain note, admitting, “I don’t know why I survived that night. I don’t know what comes next.”
Christa Pike's botched execution
Pike was convicted in 1996 of the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
Her execution was carried out on September 30 after a federal appeals court briefly paused it. The US Supreme Court later overturned that stay, allowing the execution to proceed following a delay of several hours.
Officials administered two doses of pentobarbital, but Pike survived.
She became the first person in US history to survive after receiving lethal injection.
She was later taken to a hospital, placed on a ventilator and eventually woke and began speaking.
She has since returned to prison. The Tennessee Department of Correction has said it followed its established protocol.
Her lawyers allege that problems with the IV lines caused the drugs to enter the tissue of her arms rather than being properly administered into her bloodstream. They also said the execution team had been warned about difficulties with her veins.
The Tennessee Department of Correction, however, has said it followed the state's established execution protocol.
Gov. Bill Lee has so far paused all remaining executions this year, postponed hers indefinitely and ordered an independent review.
The prisons chief, Frank Strada, resigned. Lee has said her sentence is likely to remain the same unless the courts decide otherwise.
