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Sentenced American Krista Pike made her first public statement since a Tennessee prison tried to enforce her death sentence by giving her two injections that did not work.
Pike was given one and then a second dose of the drug pentobarbital, but doctors said not enough of the drug entered her bloodstream to cause her death.
The statement drawn up by the convicted person was distributed by her lawyers.
Pike begins it this way: “A month ago, on September 30th, I walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend Men's Prison, ready to die. I have come to terms with my fate."
After this, Pike, according to her, came to herself alone in the prison hospital, not understanding what was happening to her.
“There was not a moment after that day when I was not in pain,” Pike said in a statement her lawyers posted on social media. - My body hurts. My hands hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. It's still difficult for me to speak. And it's not just physical pain. Pain permeates my mind and my soul.”
After the failed execution, 50-year-old Pike was taken to hospital in critical condition. She was then returned to prison, where she had spent the previous 30 years.
“I am mostly isolated in the prison medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me. This isolation brings its own special pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement, and much of what I experience today is a repeat of that environment,” the killer says.
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Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. Her case is the only known in history in which a person survived the death penalty by injection.
Soon after, experts said that one possible explanation was that the injections bypassed the venous system and the toxin remained in the subcutaneous layers of tissue.
After Pike was transferred to a hospital, her lawyers said that after the execution attempt, she developed pneumonia, her hands were swollen and she was unable to swallow.
“I am healing and I know I am getting stronger,” Pike continued in his statement. “But just because the wounds are healing doesn’t mean I’m okay.”
Pike was 18 years old when she and her then-17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom they met at a camp for troubled teens.
Shipp was not sentenced to death because he was a minor at the time of the murder. He is still in prison.
Pike's defense argued that the conviction revealed circumstances of physical and mental abuse against Pike in her youth that were not known to the jury at the time of the trial. Pike's lawyers argue that under current standards, these circumstances would mean that the death sentence could not be imposed on their client.
“I could never imagine living after this day,” Pike said in a statement. “I am deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in such a terrible situation.”
Tennessee authorities have not yet explained why the death penalty failed, although they insisted that they chose the right method to carry it out.
Following the failure to carry out the execution, state Governor Bill Lee ordered a halt to all executions until the circumstances were clarified. But when asked by reporters what Pike's fate might be now, the governor replied: "I believe her sentence will remain the same unless the court decides otherwise."
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