US death row inmate Christa Pike has released her first public statement since her botched execution in September.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said in the statement.
“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.”
Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital at the end of last month after surviving two lethal injections of the drug pentobarbital, which left her in a critical condition.
She has since been sent back to the prison where she has spent the last 30 years for murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Pike is thought to be the only person to survive an execution attempt by lethal injection.
“I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger,” she said in her statement on Friday. “But healing is not the same as being okay.”
Her lawyers previously said she had suffered from pneumonia following the attempted execution, had significant swelling on her arms and was also unable to swallow.
Pike 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.
Shipp was spared the death penalty because he was not legally an adult when the crime was committed. He remains in prison.
Pike’s botched execution captivated and shocked the world last month and shocked Pike, too.
“I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position,” she said in her statement.
Bethany Mann, a friend of Pike’s and a founder of Child Arise Tennessee, which supports children and families affected by parental incarceration, told the BBC on Friday that she had been in direct contact with Pike since the botched execution attempt.
When asked about her reaction to Pike’s statement, Mann said: “Truthfully, I don’t know that I have anything to add to what Christa has already expressed so powerfully herself, and I want to be respectful of her privacy.”
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee paused all executions for the remainder of the year and ordered an independent review to “determine exactly what occurred”.
Lee was asked by reporters this week about a potential second execution attempt. “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts,” he responded.
Speaking about the state’s response to what happened to Pike, Mann said: “I find it deeply troubling that, even after what Christa endured, Governor Lee has shown little public willingness to reconsider the death penalty itself, rather than simply the procedures used to carry it out.”
She added: “What happened to Christa is not an isolated tragedy, nor should this conversation begin and end with her.”
The Tennessee Department of Correction has not explained why the execution did not go as planned, though it has defended the method it used.
It declined comment on Pike’s statement when contacted by the BBC.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, was among those pushing for Pike to be put to death and attended the botched execution, later calling it a “mess”.
She told a local ABC News affiliate in Florida, where she lives, that she thinks the state owes her an apology.
“All I wanted was justice,” Martinez said.
Pike was the first woman scheduled to be executed in the state of Tennessee in over 200 years.
Her lawyers have spent decades appealing her case. In the days leading up to her scheduled execution, both the US Supreme Court and Lee declined to block the execution.
The attempted execution of Pike was not the first in Tennessee in 2026 that did not go to plan.
The execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed in May after staff were unable to find a vein for a lethal injection. He was granted a year’s reprieve by the governor.
In 2022, more than a third of executions across the US were botched or highly problematic, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take an ethical stance on the penalty.
