Governor won't commute Pike's sentence as Slemmer family says victim eclipsed

Pike, first woman Tennessee attempted to execute in 200 years, survived lethal injection

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he will not commute the death sentence of Christa Pike, the death row prisoner who survived a lethal injection Sept. 30. Lee ordered an investigation and paused executions in the state.

“She’s still incarcerated under the laws of the State of Tennessee,” Lee said, according to WSMV TV. “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”

Pike, her then-boyfriend and another young woman tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995. Slemmer’s family has said it is also upset and that attention on Pike’s condition has taken focus away from the victim. “I think the state owes me a big apology,” Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told WTLV earlier this month.

Pike, who was 18 at the time, is the only one of the three with a death sentence. Her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was ineligible for the death penalty because he was 17. The other woman, Shadolla Peterson, testified against Pike and Shipp and was given probation.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pike is the first woman Tennessee has attempted to execute in 200 years and the first prisoner ever to survive a lethal injection. “This failed attempt is the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” the center’s executive director, Robin M. Maher, said in an Oct. 1 statement.

Pike issued her first public statement since the attempt Thursday through her attorneys. Pike, 50, said she is recovering “but healing is not the same as being OK.”

“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,” Pike said in the written statement. “And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”

Pike was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30 and was taken to a hospital, where she stayed for 10 days. Her attorneys said they did not expect her to survive, but she woke up and began talking.

In the statement, Pike said she was “prepared to die” but instead “woke up alone in a hospital 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.

Pike is now fighting to prevent a second execution. She is back in prison and getting medical care there, her lawyers said.

“Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me,” Pike said. “That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement, and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition.”