Christa Pike made her first public statement a month after the failed execution in the American state of Tennessee, pointing to the constant physical pain and psychological suffering she’s experiencing.
In a message published Friday by her legal team, she said there has been no painless moment since the injection of a large dose of pentbarbital sedative during her attempt to take life on September 30th.
It hurts my body, arms, hands and throat. I still have a hard time talking. But pain is not just physical. There is pain in my mind and soul, Piquet said, criticising also the disability that, according to her, has placed everyone in this difficult situation.
Piquet was tied to the bar of the execution room in Tennessee, where she was to be executed for the murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995, when she was 18. The execution team took about 60 minutes to secure an intravenous line to inject the deadly substance, but the procedure failed and the 50-year-old survived.
After the event, she spent 10 days in intensive treatment at the hospital and later returned to the Debra Johnson rehabilitation centre in Nashville, where she is currently kept mostly in solitary confinement. Piquet said that staying away from people and human ties is another form of suffering for him, since he had spent the first 28 years in the death sentences prison in isolation conditions.
The event prompted strong reactions in Tennessee and throughout the United States, while Republican Governor Bill Lee ordered the suspension of further executions until an independent investigation into what happened. It is still not clear what will happen to Pike’s sentence, while the governor has declared he expects it to remain in force, unless courts decide otherwise.
In her statement, Pike said she was prepared to die that night and that she had accepted her fate, but after her wake in the hospital, alone, confused and in pain, she is trying to understand why she survived. She thanked doctors, nurses, lawyers and all those who supported her, adding that she is trying to recover from the day-to-day and find strength in the kindness of people who have reminded her that she is not alone.
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Source Layer: Signal
