‘My body hurts’: Christa Pike speaks for first time since failed execution

NASHVILLE — Christa Pike, the Tennessee death-row inmate who survived a botched execution last month, says she has been in constant pain and isolated since the failed attempt, The New York Times reported Friday.

“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” Pike, 50, said in a statement she dictated to her lawyers. She said her body, arms, hands and throat still ache and that she struggles to speak.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate in Knoxville. On Sept. 30, the execution team struggled for nearly an hour to place an IV, according to her lawyer. She then became the first person to survive a lethal dose of pentobarbital.

Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions for the rest of his term and ordered an independent investigation. Pike’s lawyers have asked him to grant clemency, but Lee said he expects her sentence to stand unless the courts decide otherwise.