Christa Pike speaks out after surviving botched execution: 'Deeply hurt by the incompetence'

Christa Pike said in a statement released by her attorneys on Friday that she is "recovering" but had been "deeply hurt by the incompetence" after her botched execution in Tennessee last month.

"My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul," she said.

Pike dictated her message to her legal team, the statement said.

The statement, her first public comments since the failed execution, comes one month after her execution date.

Pike touched on the day she was scheduled to be executed, the moments after she awoke and the toll the failed execution took on her in the statement.

Pike is currently in the infirmary at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, Tennessee, the statement said.

"I walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men's prison prepared to die. I had made my peace," she said. "I had told the people who loved me, supported me and stood by me through the years I was grateful for them. I had also told the people in the room and who were there to witness my execution that I was leaving them in loving kindness."

Pike said days after her survival, she awoke "confused and in pain."

She said she had "not contemplated life beyond that night" and was "deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position."

According to Pike, she has been "largely isolated in the prison's medical ward," which has brought about "its own kind of pain."

Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row, compared her current isolation to the 28 years she spent in solitary confinement, saying this is "a repeat of that condition."

On Friday, she filed an emergency motion in federal court over the conditions of her confinement, which alleges that the terms of a settlement agreement reached with the state in 2024 to allow her to have social contact with other female inmates are being violated, according to her attorneys.

"Since her return to prison, State officials have kept her alone in the prison infirmary, cut off from all other women in custody and with no expected end date for her isolation," her attorneys, Angie Bergman, Brian Roark and Hannah Webber, said in a statement. "The motion was filed on an emergency basis because each day of continued isolation causes further harm to Ms. Pike."

In her statement, Pike acknowledged the "love and support" she has received, saying, "To know that so many people care about me, that they see me as a human being whose life matters, is something I cannot fully put into words."

"I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others," Pike said. "I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone."

Pike, 50, was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

"I continue to think about my victim's family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured," Pike said.

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez -- who had traveled from her home in Orange Park, Florida, to Nashville with her husband for the execution -- told ABC Jacksonville affiliate WJXX that she believes that the state failed her family.

"All I wanted was justice," Martinez told WJXX.

Pike is the first person reported to have survived lethal injection after being given medications, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Witnesses to the Sept. 30 execution said that authorities appeared to administer two rounds of lethal pentobarbital but that Pike appeared to still be breathing an hour later when witnesses were escorted out of the chamber.

Pike reportedly asked, "Where am I?" after regaining consciousness in a hospital nearly a week after the botched execution left her critically injured and temporarily on a ventilator, according to one of her attorneys.

One of her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell with Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, told ABC News on Friday that Pike has a "lot of burns on her arms" from the pentobarbital that are "healing very slowly."

He said the prison's medical ward where she is recovering is "extremely isolated" and that she is "mentally having a very hard time recovering."

"We're very concerned with her condition, both physically and mentally," Ferrell said.

In the wake of the botched execution, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered a temporary halt to scheduled executions in the state, and Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada resigned.

Speaking to reporters this week, Lee said he expected her sentence would remain unchanged, despite the circumstances.

"As it relates to a particular individual like Christa Pike and her crime, she is still incarcerated under the laws of the state of Tennessee. And I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before, unless determined otherwise by the courts," Lee said.

The legal team for Pike has called on Lee to commute her death sentence to life without parole, Ferrell said.

"We have presented the facts as we know them of what happened, what Christa is suffering through currently and asked that the governor commute her sentence," Ferrell said. "Not only for the reasons we originally asked, but also for the reasons of what the state has put her through, that those are good reasons to commute her sentence to life without parole, which is certainly not a light sentence in any situation."