Christa Pike has rare cancer, lawyers told court before botched execution
US death row inmate Christa Pike has a rare form of cancer, her attorneys told a court months before she survived a botched execution.
Pike, 50, suffers “a rare form of blood cancer called myeloproliferative disorder”, her lawyers said in a complaint submitted to court in January this year, People reported after obtaining a copy of the complaint.
Christa Pike has a rare form of blood cancer, her attorneys told court in an unearthed complaint. J. Miles Cary, Knoxville News Sentinel/Imagn Images via CNN
The cancer was linked to her blood disorder that her lawyers had warned would interfere with the lethal injection process.
In the complaint, they said her condition would “very likely to result in unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace”.
They argued that her thrombocytosis, a condition involving higher platelet levels in blood, could increase Pike’s risk of a buildup of fluid in her lungs - known as a severe pulmonary edema.
“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,” they said.
Pike, 50, received two supposedly lethal doses of pentobarbital on September 30 in Tennessee’s execution chamber.
She survived both but was hospitalised for 10 days.
The execution was halted after Pike was observed making strange noises and complaining that her arm felt like it was burning.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered a review of the process and halted all scheduled executions for at least the rest of 2026.
Pike has been returned to prison and continues to receive medical care, as her lawyers seek to prevent a second execution attempt, arguing it would only result in further undue pain and suffering.
“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,” Pike said in a written statement her attorneys say was dictated to them, in late October.
“And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike murdered Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Supplied
Pike said she was “prepared to die” by execution, but instead “woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain”, according to the statement.
“Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me,” Pike said.
“That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition.”
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, a crime she committed aged 18 alongside her boyfriend.
- Reported with CNN.
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