US inmate Christa Pike says she woke up ‘confused and in pain’ after failed execution
US death row inmate Christa Pike has issued her first public statement since surviving a botched execution attempt in September, revealing that she continues to experience severe physical and emotional pain.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said in the statement.
She described ongoing pain in her body, arms, hands and throat, adding that she still struggles to speak. Pike also disclosed that the experience had left her with deep emotional and psychological distress.
The 50-year-old was discharged from hospital at the end of last month after surviving two attempted lethal injections using the drug pentobarbital, which left her in critical condition.
She has since been returned to the prison where she has spent the past 30 years following her conviction for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Pike is believed to be the only person to have survived an attempted execution by lethal injection.
In her Friday statement, she said she was gradually recovering and regaining strength but stressed that physical improvement did not mean she had fully recovered from the ordeal.
Her lawyers had earlier disclosed that she developed pneumonia after the failed execution attempt, suffered significant swelling in her arms and experienced difficulty swallowing.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for disadvantaged young people.
Shipp, who was not legally an adult when the crime occurred, escaped the death penalty and remains in prison.
Reflecting on the failed execution, Pike said she had never imagined a future beyond that night and expressed frustration over what she described as incompetence that had placed several people in a difficult position.
Bethany Mann, a friend of Pike and co-founder of Child Arise Tennessee, an organisation supporting children and families affected by parental incarceration, told the BBC that she had maintained direct contact with Pike since the incident.
Reacting to Pike’s statement, Mann said she had little to add to the inmate’s account and wanted to respect her privacy.
Meanwhile, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the remainder of the year and ordered an independent investigation to establish what went wrong during the attempted execution.
When questioned this week about whether Pike could face another execution attempt, Lee suggested that her sentence would likely remain unchanged unless the courts ruled otherwise.
Mann criticised the state’s response, arguing that the governor had shown little willingness to reconsider capital punishment itself rather than focus solely on the procedures used to carry it out.
She maintained that Pike’s experience should prompt a broader discussion about the death penalty, describing the incident as part of a wider problem rather than an isolated case.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has yet to explain why the execution failed, although it has defended the procedure used. The department declined to comment on Pike’s latest statement.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, who had campaigned for Pike’s execution, witnessed the failed attempt and later described it as a mess.
Speaking to a local ABC News affiliate in Florida, where she lives, Martinez said she believed the state owed her an apology, adding that her only desire had been to see justice served.
Pike was the first woman scheduled for execution in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Her lawyers have spent decades challenging her conviction and death sentence. However, in the days leading up to the scheduled execution, both the US Supreme Court and Governor Lee declined to intervene.
The incident was not the first botched execution recorded in Tennessee in 2026. In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed after prison staff failed to locate a suitable vein for the lethal injection. He was subsequently granted a one-year reprieve by the governor.
A 2022 report by the Death Penalty Information Center also found that more than a third of executions carried out across the United States that year were botched or involved significant complications.
Source: BBC
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