Christa Pike, who survived a botched execution: “Everything hurts”

Christa Pike, who survived her execution in the U.S. state of Tennessee on Sept. 30, has spoken publicly for the first time about what happened, saying she has not spent a single minute without pain since that night. She was due to become the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years, but she survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital and was left in critical condition. She was then hospitalized, and the execution was suspended.

Pike was convicted in 1996 of the brutal murder of a fellow student. In her statement she writes that she entered the execution chamber at the men’s prison in Riverbend ready to die and reconciled to it. She told her loved ones and the witnesses that she was grateful to them and was leaving them with affection.

Several days later she woke up in a hospital “confused and in pain.” “My body hurts, my arms hurt, my throat hurts, and I still have trouble speaking,” Pike wrote, adding that her suffering is not only physical but mental. She thanked the first responders, doctors and nurses, and her lawyers, who refused to give up the fight.

“I don’t know why I survived that night, and I don’t know what comes next. Some days it is harder to find hope,” she says. For now she is trying to heal day by day. According to witnesses, after the second dose they heard her snoring while her lawyers sought urgent medical help. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance and is now back in prison.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz