Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who survived a failed lethal injection last month, said Friday she remains in constant pain and struggles to speak, in her first statement since the September 30 execution attempt.
Pike’s case matters because she is thought to be the only person to survive an execution attempt by lethal injection, and her ordeal has forced Tennessee to review how it carries out death sentences, cost its prison chief his job, and paused the state’s other executions for the year.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” Pike said in the statement, which was dictated to her legal team from the infirmary at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville. “My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak.”
Pike, 50, said the pain goes beyond her physical injuries. “There is pain in my mind and in my soul,” she said, adding that she had walked into the execution chamber prepared to die and woke up later, alone and confused, in a hospital bed.
“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,” she said. “I don’t know why I survived that night. I don’t know what comes next.”
Pike survived two doses of the drug pentobarbital during the execution attempt on September 30. Her lawyers say the drug probably did not enter her bloodstream correctly and instead pooled in her arms, leaving them burned and blistered. She spent her first days in hospital unconscious and on a ventilator, according to reports of her case.
Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on whether a problem with the intravenous line caused the drug to collect in surrounding tissue rather than enter her bloodstream. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not explained why the execution did not go as planned, though it has defended the method it used.
Pike also spoke about the family of her victim, saying she continues to think about them and the terrible pain and loss they have endured. She thanked the medical workers who cared for her and those who have shown her kindness since.
Her legal team has urged Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life in prison. Lee told reporters this week that he suspects her sentence will stay the same unless the courts decide otherwise. Her lawyers have also asked a federal judge to let her interact with other prisoners, saying her isolation since the failed execution has caused significant psychological harm and trauma.
Lee has ordered an independent review of the failed execution and postponed the state’s other lethal injection scheduled for this year. Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, announced his resignation in the wake of the failed execution, with his final day on October 31.
Pike was 18 in 1995 when she and her boyfriend lured 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer into woods in Knoxville, where they tortured and killed her. She was sentenced to death and became the first woman scheduled to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Slemmer’s mother travelled from Florida to witness the September execution.
A 2025 deposition released with court documents this week showed prison Warden Kenneth Nelson saying the execution team does not practise inserting IV lines during training sessions, at the directive of the prison commissioner. That detail has added to the scrutiny of how the execution was carried out.
What is confirmed is that Pike survived the September 30 attempt, remains sentenced to die, and is being held in solitary confinement while the review continues. What is not yet known is when, or whether, the state will set a new execution date. “For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time,” Pike said.
