Christa Pike speaks after failed Tennessee execution, says she is in constant pain

Her first public words

Christa Pike, a 50-year-old woman under a death sentence in Tennessee, has spoken publicly for the first time since the failed execution on 30 September. In a statement her legal team published on 30 October, she described continuing physical pain and mental anguish, and said she still struggles to speak. She said she had gone into the execution chamber at Riverbend prepared to die, and that she had said goodbye to the people who had supported her over the years. Pike also described herself as deeply hurt by what she called the incompetence that had placed many people in such a terrible position.

Pike said she has not gone a single moment without suffering since that night, and described pain in her arms, hands and throat. She also said she keeps thinking about the family of the classmate she was convicted of killing in 1995, when she was 18. That classmate was 19 years old.

The execution attempt

The execution was scheduled for 30 September at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike was strapped to a gurney and given two doses of pentobarbital, but she remained alive, according to journalists who watched the procedure. Court documents, as described in the reporting, allege that staff used about ten needles while repeatedly trying to secure intravenous access. According to the same allegations, members of the execution team wondered whether her veins had ruptured. Witnesses could still hear her breathing and sounds resembling snoring, and Pike reportedly complained that her hand was burning and that she felt she would burst.

Hospital stay and return to prison

Pike was rushed to hospital, where she remained unconscious and on a ventilator for several days. Her lawyers said that after the failed attempt she developed severe swelling in her hands, pneumonia and a blood clot. She woke up on 6 October and was discharged on 10 October, when she returned to the Debra K. Johnson correctional center. She has regained the ability to walk, but says she is still in pain.

Unresolved questions

Executions in Tennessee have been suspended, according to the reporting. It remains unclear whether state authorities will attempt to execute Pike a second time.