Pike Speaks Out a Month After Surviving Tennessee Lethal Injection

Christa Pike, 50, said she has been in constant pain and struggles to speak, one month after surviving a lethal injection in Tennessee. In her first public comments since the September 30 attempt, Pike attributed the outcome to incompetence and said she had prepared to die in peace.

"There has not been a moment since that night when I have not felt pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to talk. And the pain is not just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul," Pike said in a statement dictated from the prison infirmary where she is housed.

Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital during the execution attempt for the 1995 stabbing death of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time and was convicted alongside her boyfriend, making her one of the youngest women sentenced to death.

"I am deeply pained by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible situation," Pike said. "I continue to think of my victim's family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured."

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has called for an investigation into what went wrong and postponed the state's other lethal injection scheduled for this year. The state corrections director resigned. Pike's attorneys say the failed procedure left her arms burned and blistered; she was unconscious and on a ventilator during her first days in the hospital. Medical and execution experts have focused on the possibility that a problem with the intravenous line caused the drug to collect in tissue rather than enter the bloodstream.

Pike's attorneys have urged the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison. Lee told reporters this week that he expects her sentence to remain unchanged unless courts determine otherwise. Pike was hospitalized immediately after the execution attempt and later returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.