The woman in Tennessee who survived an execution attempt said on Oct. 30 that she is constantly in pain and is still struggling to talk one month later.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak,” Christa Pike said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times by her attorneys.
“And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike, 50, was moved to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville earlier in the month after spending time in a hospital. She is in the infirmary at the center, her lawyers said.
Officials injected Pike with two doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30 inside a different prison in Nashville. When she did not die, they called an ambulance, and she was rushed to a hospital.
Tennessee’s governor has halted executions in the state through the end of the year as a third party reviews what happened.
Pike said on Friday she was prepared to die when her date of execution arrived and had made her peace. She said she woke up several days later confused and in pain.
“I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position,” she said.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has said it followed the state’s execution protocol.
“I continue to think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured,” Pike said in the new statement.
“I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger. But healing is not the same as being okay.”
Pike was convicted in the 1995 murder of another woman on the campus of the University of Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.
Pike’s attorneys have asked Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to commute her sentence in the wake of the failed execution, but he has so far declined.
Pike said that she has been trying to find meaning in surviving the execution attempt.
“One thing that has given me strength is the extraordinary love and support I have received from people around the world,” she said.
“I am overwhelmed by the kindness and prayers of people I have known for years and complete strangers who have never met me.
“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. It is humbling, and it has touched me more deeply than I can explain.”
