Christa Pike says she is ‘healing’ but in constant pain since botched execution

Oct. 30 (UPI) — Christa Pike, the convicted murderer who survived lethal injection in Tennessee in September, issued a statement Thursday for the first time since the attempt.

Pike, 50, said she is recovering “but healing is not the same as being OK.”

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

After she was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30, she was taken to a hospital where she stayed for 10 days. Her attorneys didn’t expect her to survive, but she woke up and began talking.

In her statement, Pike said she was “prepared to die,” but instead “woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain.”

“I had not contemplated life beyond that night and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position,” Pike said.

Pike is the first woman Tennessee attempted to execute in 200 years, and she is the first prisoner ever to have survived after a lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

“This failed attempt is the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin M. Maher, DPI executive director, in an Oct. 1 statement.

Pike is now fighting to prevent a second execution. She is back in prison and getting medical care there, her lawyers said.

“Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me,” Pike said in the statement. “That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement, and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition.”

Pike, along with her then-boyfriend and another young woman, tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995. Pike, who was 18, is the only one of the three with a death sentence. The boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was ineligible for the death penalty because he was 17. The other woman, Shadolla Peterson, testified against Pike and Shipp and was given probation.

Slemmer’s family has said they are also upset and that the attention on Pike’s condition has taken focus away from the victim.

“I think the state owes me a big apology,” May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, told WTLV earlier this month.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Pike said he won’t commute Pike’s sentence. He ordered an investigation and paused executions in the state.

“She’s still incarcerated under the laws of the State of Tennessee,” Lee said, WSMV TV reported. “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”