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.
The majority of the cost in applying the death penalty isn’t the method of execution, it’s all the administrative/court work to make sure you aren’t executing someone who shouldn’t be, which still allows innocent people on death row at an estimated rate of 4%.