Christa Pike makes first public comments since botched execution: ‘Healing is not the same as feeling good’

Christa Pike, who survived the attempted execution by lethal injection in Tennessee a month ago, is speaking out for the first time, saying she is recovering, “but healing is not the same as feeling good.”

“There hasn’t been a time since that night that I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still have trouble speaking,” Pike said in a written statement that his lawyers say was dictated. “And the pain is not just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”

Pike, 50, was hospitalized after surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state tried to execute her Sept. 30 for the beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Shortly after the failed procedure, Pike was on a ventilator and her lawyers did not expect her to survive. But she woke up and then started talking and walking with help.

Pike said she was “prepared to die” by execution, but “woke up alone in a hospital, confused and in pain,” according to the statement.

This is the first public comment attributed to Pike since his botched execution. She is the only person to survive being injected with lethal chemicals during an execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike was returned to prison earlier this month after a 10-day hospitalization and continued to receive medical treatment, according to her attorneys.

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

Pike is fighting what will likely be a lengthy legal battle to prevent a second attempt to put her to death. His lawyers filed a lawsuit in January seeking to delay his execution because of the state’s new lethal injection protocol, saying it was untested and would “certainly or very likely result in unnecessary and additional pain and suffering, terror and shame.”

“The new protocol provides no rescue measures, in violation of plaintiffs’ rights under the United States Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution in the event of failed enforcement,” Pike’s legal team warned at the time.

Pike’s legal team asked a judge to amend his complaint to reflect what happened to him on September 30. On Thursday, the court ruled that Pike had until the end of January to refile, giving him more time due to his current health.

Immediately after the botched execution, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, ordered an investigation into what went wrong in the death chamber and indefinitely postponed another execution planned for this year.

The failed execution of Pike also upset Slemmer’s family, who said the focus on Pike’s condition took the focus away from the victim.

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

Lee is not inclined to commute Pike’s sentence and remove the death penalty, he told reporters this week in Nashville.

“She is still incarcerated under the laws of the state of Tennessee,” Lee said, according to CNN affiliate WSMV. “I suspect his sentence will be the same as before, unless the courts decide otherwise.”

This story has been updated with additional information.