‘I don’t know why I survived’: Christa Pike releases first statement since botched execution

Christa Pike has spoken of her constant pain, struggles to speak and her uncertainty of why she survived in her first public statement since the botched execution.

Pike said she is “deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position”.

“I continue to think about my victim’s family,” she said, “and the terrible pain and loss they have endured.”

Pike, 50, was hospitalised after surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state of Tennessee tried to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

She was 18 when she tortured and killed Slemmer with her boyfriend, becoming one of the youngest women to be sentenced to death.

Her lawyers have since said that the injection probably did not enter her bloodstream correctly and instead pooled in her arms, leaving them burned and blistered.

She was left on a ventilator for days and at one point her lawyers said they did not expect the 50-year-old to survive.

“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.

“And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”

Pike said she had been prepared to die in peace, but instead woke up alone and confused in a hospital bed.

She said she’s “searching for meaning in what happened to me”.

“I don’t know why I survived that night. I don’t know what comes next,” Pike said in a statement dictated to her legal team from prison.

She still remains sentenced to death, but her attorneys are calling for Republican Governor Bill Lee to change that to life in prison.

However, Lee told reporters this week, “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts”.

The Governor has since tapped a former US attorney to conduct an independent review of the failed execution, and postponed the state’s other lethal injection slated for later this year.

Pike’s lethal injection was reportedly plagued with issues with her attorney warning that her small veins and diagnosis of thrombocytosis, a blood-clotting disorder, could make IV access difficult.

In a court document, her attorney Randy Spivey said the execution team struggled to get working IV lines in Pike’s arms and expressed concern that a vein might be “blowing”.

Pike remained awake for much of the lethal injection, saying her arm hurt and burned before falling unconscious.

The execution began just before 7.30pm and an ambulance arrived at the prison about an hour and 45 minutes later.

The failed execution has brought renewed scrutiny to how Tennessee carries out death sentences.

In a 2025 deposition released with court documents this week, prison warden Kenneth Nelson said the execution team doesn’t practice inserting IV lines during training sessions, at the directive of the prison commissioner.

Nelson said he did not know why the practice was discontinued or when the order was given.

Practicing insertion of IVs was part of Tennessee’s prior execution protocol, but it is not included in the state’s new protocol.

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Dorinda Carter, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said she could not comment on the filing because of pending litigation.

Frank Strada, commissioner of the Department of Correction, announced his resignation following Pike’s failed execution.

His final day is October 31, Carter said.

- With Associated Press