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 expensive because the pre-trial preparations are more extensive, the trial is longer, death row is more expensive to run and staff, and they get a lot of chances to appeal up to the last minute. Not a lot of the cost comes from the execution method itself.
Which of those things would you like to cut for efficiency? Should we not spend as much on the trials? Make them shorter and speed things up? Should we reduce security on death row? Should we not give them as many chances to appeal?
The only way to make it cheaper is to make it even crueler. Those decades of suffering might end with a pardon, or a acquittal, or a new trial that leads to a reduced sentence. There’s a reason it takes so long.