When Christa Pike finally entered the lethal injection room after spending 30 agonizing years on Tennessee’s death row, she was at peace, ready to face her impending execution. When she awoke in a hospital following the states’ botched execution attempt, she says she was disoriented and in excruciating pain, all thanks to the barbarity of lethal injection.
According to the Associated Press, Pike has been in constant pain in the month following Tennessee’s horrifically botched execution attempts. On September 30, state executioners made two attempts to administer pentobarbital, a highly controversial barbiturate the sale of which to US penal institutions is restricted by international bodies like the European Union.
Observers at the time noted at least seven needles piercing Pike’s arm during one injection, followed by a 90-minute period where the woman appeared to be snapping in and out of consciousness. After it became apparent that the second injection failed, Pike was rushed to the hospital, where she was listed in critical condition.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” Pike said in her first statement since her failed execution. “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.”
Tennessee’s failure to carry out an execution 30 years in the making has become a major legal and ethical dilemma around the efficacy of lethal injection in particular, and capital punishment as a whole.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an estimated three percent of all executions between 1890 and 2010 were botched, resulting in some 276 gruesome deaths at the hands of state authorities. Lethal injection is by far the most likely to go wrong, with an overall failure rate of over seven percent.
That being the case, Pike is one of 75 people to experience a botched lethal injection in the US, and according to the AP, the only one to ever survive the particular drug cocktail that was pumped into her arm.
“I don’t know why I survived that night,” Pike continued in her statement. “I don’t know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, 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.”
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