Christa Pike makes first public comments since botched execution: ‘Healing is not the same as being okay’

By Devon M. Sayers, Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection a month ago, is speaking out for the first time, saying she is recovering, “but healing is not the same as being okay.”

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

Pike, 50, was hospitalized after she survived two doses of pentobarbital as the state attempted to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Soon after the failed procedure, Pike was on a ventilator, and her attorneys did not expect her to survive. But she woke up and later began talking and walking with assistance.

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.

It’s the first public comment attributed to Pike since the botched execution. She is the only person to ever survive being injected with lethal chemicals in an execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike was returned to prison earlier this month after a 10-day hospitalization and has continued receiving medical care, according to her lawyers.

“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 in the statement. “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 is fighting what will likely be a protracted legal battle to prevent a second attempt to put her to death. Her attorneys filed a complaint in January seeking to delay her execution because of the state’s new lethal injection protocol, saying it was untested and “sure or very likely to result in unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace.”

“The new protocol does not provide for any life saving measures, in violation of the Plaintiffs rights under the United States Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution in the event that the execution fails,” Pike’s legal team warned at the time.

Pike’s legal team has asked a judge to amend their complaint to reflect what happened to her on September 30. On Thursday, the court ruled Pike has until late January to make a new filing, giving her extra time due to her current medical condition.

State is investigating what went wrong

In the immediate aftermath of the botched execution, Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee ordered an investigation into what went wrong in the death chamber and indefinitely postponed another execution scheduled this year.

The failure to execute Pike also upset Slemmer’s family, who said the attention on Pike’s condition has taken attention away from the victim.

“I think the state owes me a big apology,” May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, told CNN affiliate WTLV this month.

Lee is not inclined to commute Pike’s sentence and take the death penalty off the table, he told reporters this week in Nashville.

“She’s still incarcerated under the laws of the State of Tennessee,” Lee said, according to CNN affiliate WSMV. “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Avni Trivedi contributed to this report.