Death row inmate Christa Pike has spoken publicly for the first time since surviving a botched lethal injection, saying she is in constant pain and afraid of being sent back to her old prison block.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital in September during an execution attempt in Tennessee that sparked international outrage. Her lawyers said the drugs probably did not enter her bloodstream correctly and instead pooled in her arms, leaving them burned and blistered. Unconscious, she was hospitalised on a ventilator for days, and at one point her lawyers said they did not expect her to survive.
Lawyers warned of cancer before execution
Nine months before Pike was due to be put to death, her lawyers filed a complaint warning that lethal injection could be especially painful and dangerous due to a disorder linked to her condition. According to reports, the complaint, filed on January 8, argued that her planned execution was a violation of the First, Eighth and Fourteenth amendments.
The complaint reportedly said Pike's "platelet count is significantly elevated, likely due to a rare form of blood cancer called myeloproliferative disorder". Her lawyers argued that her thrombocytosis diagnosis — a condition characterised by elevated platelet levels — could increase the risk of pulmonary edema, a potentially dangerous buildup of fluid in the lungs during a lethal injection.
"A pulmonary edema is not simply painful or uncomfortable; it can create a sense of suffocating or drowning that has been likened by experts to the sensation intentionally induced by the practice of waterboarding—an unambiguous form of outright torture," Pike's lawyer said in the filing, according to PEOPLE.
Pike's first public statement
In her first public comments since the failed execution, Pike said she has been left in constant pain and is struggling to speak. She said she was "deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position".
"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. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul," she said.
Pike said she also "continues to think about my victim's family" and the "terrible pain and loss they have endured". In a recently-filed motion, she reportedly pleaded with the courts not to send her back to her old prison block, saying she is "afraid" she will be seriously hurt as she cannot defend herself.
Pike and her boyfriend tortured and stabbed a 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, to death in 1995. Pike was 18 at the time, making her one of the youngest women sentenced to death and the first woman scheduled to be executed in the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years. She is believed to be the only person to survive an execution attempt by lethal injection.
