Christa Pike: Death row inmate breaks silence after surviving lethal injection
A death row inmate who survived two lethal injections last month has released a public statement after being sent back to prison.
US death row inmate Christa Pike has publicly broken her silence for the first time since surviving a botched execution in September.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said in a public statement.
“My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Pike, 50, was left in a critical condition after surviving two doses of the drug pentobarbital, meant to act as a lethal injection.
She was discharged from hospital at the end of last month and sent back to the prison where she has spent the last 30 years for murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Pike is understood to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt by lethal injection.
“I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger,” she said in her statement on Friday.
“But healing is not the same as being okay.”
Pike’s team of lawyers said she had suffered from full-body pain, pneumonia, significant swelling on her arms and was unable to swallow following the attempted execution.
Pike was the first woman scheduled to be executed in the state of Tennessee in over 200 years, a fact which had already drawn attention.
The distressing details of the botched execution only furthered public captivation of the case.
“I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position,” Pike said of her shock to be alive.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for low-income young people.
Although he remains in prison, Shipp was spared the death penalty because he was not legally an adult when the crime was committed.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, was among those pushing for Pike to be put to death and attended the botched execution, later calling it a “mess”.
She told a local ABC News affiliate in Florida, where she lives, that she thinks the state owes her an apology.
“All I wanted was justice,” Martinez said.
Pike’s lawyers have spent decades appealing her case, even lodging last-ditch efforts to block the execution just days before it occurred, an act which both the US Supreme Court and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declined.
The attempted execution was not Tennessee’s first to go wrong in 2026.
The execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed in May after staff were unable to find a vein for a lethal injection, granting him an extra year of life.
Following the failure of Pike’s lethal injection, Governor Lee paused all executions for the remainder of the year and ordered an independent review to “determine exactly what occurred”.
Lee indicated the state would try again when asked by reporters this week about a potential second execution attempt.
“I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts,” he responded.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has not explained why the execution did not go as planned, though it has defended the method it used.
