Pike Says She Has Been in Pain Since Tennessee Execution Failed

Christa Pike has been in pain every day since the night the state of Tennessee tried to execute her. Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30 during the attempt to put her to death for the 1995 stabbing of classmate Colleen Slemmer, who was 19. Pike was 18 at the time of that killing, and she was among the youngest women ever sentenced to death.

Pike spoke publicly for the first time since the failed attempt in a statement released Friday. She described waking up afterward alone in a hospital bed, confused, after having prepared herself to die. "There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," she said, adding that her arms, hands and throat hurt and that she still struggles to speak. The pain, she said, is not only physical.

She placed blame on the people who carried out the procedure. "I'm deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position," Pike said, and she said she continues to think about Slemmer's family and the loss they have endured. The statement was dictated to her legal team from the infirmary at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she is housed. She was hospitalized right after the execution attempt before returning to prison.

Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an investigation into what went wrong that night and postponed the state's other lethal injection scheduled for this year. Pike's attorneys have asked the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison. Lee told reporters this week that, "I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts."

Pike also expressed thanks for the medical workers who saved her and for the people who showed her kindness. She said she does not know why she survived that night or what comes next, and that she is trying to heal one day at a time. She was hospitalized in the immediate aftermath of the failed execution and then moved back to prison.