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.

  • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    a lot of prisoners work jobs while incarcerated but that is another can of worms, besides the argument that it takes money to keep prisoners alive so maybe let’s just kill them instead is psychopathic, maybe if the system was designed towards rehabilitation instead of punishment and offered people support to begin with like free healthcare access, education and unemployment benefits, we would have less prisoners to begin with. Also if you read any news you’ll find countless examples of innocent people getting thrown in jails because the corrupt pigs didn’t want to bother doing their jobs or had a vendetta.

    • dou9m@lemmy.ca
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      17 hours ago

      I wouldn’t even give them the benefit of a doubt and call them jobs. Let’s be real: it’s generally forced, for-profit labor… AKA slavery. At least in the US.

      I totally agree with you for the most part about everything else you said though, I think it came off like I was trying to play the devil’s advocate? If anything, I was trying to say that even that argument doesn’t really warrant the continuation of these executions as it stands. Especially when it costs so much and is clearly so ineffective.