Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection a month ago, is speaking out for the first time, saying she is recovering, “but healing is not the same as being okay.”
“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,” Pike said in a written statement her attorneys say was dictated to them. “And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike, 50, was hospitalized after she survived two doses of pentobarbital as the state attempted to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Soon after the failed procedure, Pike was on a ventilator, and her attorneys did not expect her to survive. But she woke up and later began talking and walking with assistance.
It’s revenge, but it’s also avoiding responsibility. The words say it, “sentenced to death, and may God have mercy on your soul”. Everyone already lost. The victims. The murderer. Society. Killing doesn’t solve anything, it doesn’t deter more murders, it just removes them from being the state’s problem.
And it doesn’t allow us to pursue the question everyone asks, why did this happen? Because they’re dead.