Christa Pike says pain is in her mind and soul after surviving botched Tennessee execution
A Northeastern medical doctor doesn’t know how the state could have mishandled a simple procedure.
Christa Pike, the woman who survived Tennessee’s botched execution attempt, issued her first statement Friday, detailing the trauma she has suffered since the state administered two doses of lethal injection that was supposed to end her life.
In comments released through her attorney, Pike described the pain and uncertainty she has endured as she recovers in prison following the state’s failed attempt to carry out her sentence.
On. Sept. 30, Pike, 50, a Tennessee prison death chamber and received two doses of pentobarbital, a barbiturate medication that depresses the central nervous system. After 1 ½ hours she did not succumb to the drug and was rushed to a hospital. She awoke from a coma six days later.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” Pike said in a statement dictated to her attorneys, which was released to the media on Friday.
“My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak,” she said, adding that now there is “pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike, who has been on death row for three decades for murdering a 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, was in a coma and on a ventilator for almost a week following the failed execution. She returned to a Nashville prison four days later.
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Her defense team told the media that her arms were left swollen and bruised after the execution team tried to insert intravenous lines to deliver two rounds of pentobarbital into her bloodstream.
Before she lost consciousness, she complained that her arm felt as if it was going to burst and she felt a burning sensation, her lawyers earlier told reporters.
Dr. Gian Corrado, the lead physician in Northeastern University’s athletics department, refrained from commenting on Pike’s current medical condition having not examined her, but he questioned how the intravenous injection process could have been mishandled.
“It’s a very simple procedure,” Corrado said. “I would think that having an IV and a backup IV is routine. I have no idea how on Earth they couldn’t do it.”
In her statement, Pike, who is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, said she had not contemplated life beyond the night she was supposed to die.
“I don’t know why I survived that night,” she said. “I don’t know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone.”
In the aftermath of Pike’s case, Tennessee has ordered a temporary halt to executions pending a review of the procedures.
It’s unclear whether the state will try to execute Pike again.
