Christa Pike Releases First Statement One Month After Failed Tennessee Execution

Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row, said Friday she has been in pain every moment since a failed execution on Sept. 30, in her first public statement since the attempt. Pike, 50, dictated the statement to her lawyers, who released it exactly one month after the procedure. She said her body, arms, hands and throat hurt, that she still struggles to speak, and that she feels pain "in my mind and in my soul." She said she had said her goodbyes before entering the chamber at Riverbend prison and woke several days later alone in a hospital, confused.

Tennessee officials gave her two doses of pentobarbital. She was taken to a hospital, placed on a ventilator and discharged to her Nashville prison 10 days later. Her lawyers said faulty IV lines sent the drug into the tissue of her arms, leaving them swollen and bruised. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, 19, in Knoxville. Gov. Bill Lee said this week he suspects her sentence will remain unless the courts decide otherwise, while her lawyers have urged him to commute it to life without parole.

The right-leaning Daily Mail leads with Lee's remark that Pike will likely remain on death row, and adds her reported cries during the procedure and her lawyers' comparison of her injuries to bleach or Drano. The Washington Examiner leads with her statement but gives space to the brutality of the 1995 murder and the fact she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. The left-leaning NBC News and CBS News center her statement, pain and recovery, with NBC adding medical experts' views on possible needle errors and CBS noting a witness who heard her snoring. Both sides quote her statement; they differ in the weight given to the governor and the crime versus her suffering and the procedure's failure. BBC and NewsNation largely repeat her statement.