▶ Watch Video: Christa Pike back in prison and able to talk after botched execution
Christa Pike, who survived a botched execution attempt in Tennessee last month, said Friday that she’s been in pain every moment since she woke up confused in the hospital.
Pike said she’d entered the execution chamber having said her goodbyes, adding, “I had not contemplated life beyond that night.”
“Several days later I woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain,” she said in a statement dictated to her lawyers. “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. And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Her statement was released exactly one month after surviving the execution attempt. It is the first public comment she has made since.
Pike, 50, was given two doses of a lethal injection drug, but her legal team confirmed shortly after the failed procedure that, in an unprecedented turn, she was alive and had been hospitalized. One witness, a media attendee, noted she could be heard loudly snoring about one hour after the procedure had started. She was then taken by ambulance to an area hospital.
Pike’s attorneys said earlier this month she had pneumonia, a blood clot, couldn’t swallow and was unable to move her arms or hands once she regained consciousness in the hospital. One of Pike’s attorneys told reporters during a news conference that her hands “looked like if you were to blow up a surgical glove.” She was able to begin walking soon after, though, and was discharged back to the prison for further treatment on Oct. 10.
“I don’t know why I survived that night. I don’t know what comes next,” Pike said in the statement Friday. “Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time.”
Pike was convicted in 1995 of the brutal murder of her classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Court filings show that Pike, then 18, tortured and killed Slemmer, slashing her with a meat cleaver and box cutter for up to an hour in a wooded part of the University of Tennessee campus, with help from her boyfriend and a friend.
While other executions have been halted, generally they involved difficulties with finding a vein for the lethal injection. Pike is the only person known to have survived an execution attempt in the U.S. where the drug was administered, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
It is believed Pike’s veins may have ruptured before she was injected with pentobarbital, according to court documents cited by The Associated Press. The execution team used about 10 needles and tried several IV sites on both arms, her lawyer said in the filing.
“I am searching for meaning in what happened to me,” Pike said. “One thing that has given me strength is the extraordinary love and support I have received from people around the world. I am overwhelmed by the kindness and prayers of people I have known for years and complete strangers who have never met me.”
Pike’s failed execution has raised questions about the lethal injection protocol in Tennessee. Hers was the second issue this year in the state. Tony Carruthers could not be executed after the execution team members spent more than an hour trying to establish an IV line for the lethal injection. The governor granted a one-year reprieve on his execution.
CBS News reviewed the state’s lethal injection protocols going back to 2007 and found that over the years the protocols grew increasingly vague.
It remains unclear what will happen with Pike, even a month after the botched execution. Gov. Bill Lee, who has paused executions in the state through the end of the year, was asked about the next steps for Pike on Wednesday.
“I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts,” he told reporters during a press conference.
Pike’s lawyers successfully petitioned the court to preserve all evidence related to the botched execution in a hearing on Oct. 7. A follow-up hearing on Oct. 23 was canceled as the judge considers multiple motions in the case. Pike’s lawyer, Steve Ferrell, urged the governor to commute her sentence during an interview with “CBS Mornings” days after her botched execution.
“The least that could happen now is that we at least take death off the table and start looking for what the future could be for her,” Ferrell, of the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, told “CBS Mornings” on Oct. 5.
One-third of Americans back a second attempt at executing Pike, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this month.
