Christa Pike Said Execution Was Better Than Prison Days Before Botched Lethal Injection. Now She’s Back in ‘Hell’
Christa Gail PikeCredit: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Christa Pike said her scheduled execution would mark the end of her “hell” in a New York Times interview published two days before the attempt
In a letter published the following day, Pike said she was not afraid to die but was “nervous about the process”
Pike survived the Sept. 30 lethal injection attempt and has since returned to prison, where she continues recovering
Just days before surviving a botched execution, Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike described her impending death as an end to the “hell” of prison.
“I run through this execution every day in my heart,” Pike told The New York Times in an audio recording published Sept. 28. “Whatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore.”
More than three weeks later, Pike, 50, is back behind bars after surviving a failed lethal injection attempt that left her hospitalized and on a ventilator.
In a letter published by WVLT on Sept. 29, just one day before her scheduled execution, Pike said she had made peace with the possibility of dying.
“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,” she wrote. “I am not afraid to die. I am only nervous about the process.”
Christa Pike enters a Knox County Criminal Court on December 4, 2007.Credit: J. Miles Cary, Knoxville News Sentinel/USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
That process would ultimately go terribly wrong.
Pike’s attorney, Randy Spivey, who witnessed the Sept. 30 execution attempt, told NPR that the execution team spent nearly an hour trying to establish intravenous access. He said he saw at least seven needles used on her left arm.
He recalled watching Pike help the team identify where they might find a vein.
“She was at peace. She was ready to die,” Spivey told NPR on Oct. 2. “She was polite and helpful and was trying to bless people as it was all happening.”
But after two doses of pentobarbital were administered, Pike continued breathing, making sounds that Spivey described as choking.
“I thought it sounded like choking,” he said.
Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa PikeCredit: Tennessee Department of Correction via AP
The execution was eventually called off, and Pike was transported to a hospital, PEOPLE previously reported.
Her attorneys said she remained unconscious and required a ventilator in the days following the attempt. She regained consciousness in early October and subsequently began speaking and walking with assistance, PEOPLE previously reported.
Pike has since returned to prison, where she continues to recover.
She has since begun speaking in full sentences and walking more independently, although the extent of any lasting cognitive or psychological damage remains unclear.
Pike’s remarks before the execution offered a glimpse into how she viewed her decades behind bars.
In her interview with The Times, she described spending much of her imprisonment isolated from other people, including periods when she was confined to her cell for 23 hours a day.
“The biggest punishment was taking me away from people and human contact,” she said.
Pike was convicted in 1996 of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job Corps program. Pike was 18 when she and two accomplices tortured and killed Slemmer in a wooded area near the University of Tennessee campus.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told The Times before the scheduled execution that she did not believe Pike had changed during her decades in prison.
“Nobody could ever, ever convince me she’s changed,” Martinez said.
Following the failed execution, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered an independent review of the state’s execution procedures and postponed the remaining executions scheduled for 2026, PEOPLE previously reported.
Pike’s attorneys have sought to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment without parole and are preparing a constitutional challenge following the failed execution.
A court hearing scheduled for Friday, Oct. 23, concerning the state’s request to set a deadline for Pike’s attorneys to amend their legal complaint was canceled, PEOPLE previously reported.
Her legal team has requested four months to assess her injuries and prepare their challenge. The judge will consider the state’s motion without oral arguments.
Before the failed attempt, Pike had described her execution as an end to the “hell” of imprisonment.
“I’m not going to be the one here left to suffer anymore after they do this,” she told The Times.
Source: Crime