Christa Pike Releases First Statement Since Failed Execution
Seven Lights
Christa Pike, believed to be the only person to have survived an attempted execution by lethal injection, said in her first public statement Friday that she remained in constant pain and struggled to speak a month after Tennessee’s failed attempt to put her to death. She attributed the failure to “incompetence.”
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” Ms. Pike, 50, said in the statement. “I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger.”
Ms. Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital when the state attempted to execute her on September 30 at a Tennessee prison. She was listed in critical condition after the procedure and discharged from a hospital at the end of last month. She has since been returned to the prison where she has spent the last 30 years. She is being held in solitary confinement and faces an uncertain future, Al Jazeera reported.
In the statement, Ms. Pike said she “had not contemplated life beyond that night” and was “deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.” She had prepared to die in peace, she said, but woke alone and confused in a hospital bed.
Ms. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and killing of her college classmate, Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for low-income young people. Ms. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, was among those who pushed for the execution and attended it, later calling the proceeding “a mess.”
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee paused all executions for the remainder of the year after the botched attempt and ordered an independent review to “determine exactly what occurred.” He has shown little public willingness to reconsider the death penalty itself, rather than the procedures used to carry it out, and was asked by reporters this week about a potential second execution attempt. The question now before the state’s prison system and the courts is whether Tennessee may attempt to execute Ms. Pike again, and under what medical supervision.