image source, Reuters
"There has not been a single moment since that night that I have not felt pain," Christa Pike said in her first statement since her botched execution in September in Tennessee, United States.
"My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still have difficulty speaking. And the pain is not just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul," he said in a statement released by his legal team on social networks this Friday.
Pike, 50, was released from the hospital in late September after surviving two lethal injections of the drug pentobarbital, which left her in critical condition.
She was later sent back to the prison where she has been held for the past 30 years for murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Pike is believed to be the only person to have survived an attempted execution by lethal injection.
According to his lawyers, he suffered pneumonia after the attempted execution, had significant swelling in his arms and could not swallow.
"I am recovering and I know I am getting stronger," he said in his statement this Friday. "But healing is not the same as being well."
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a camp for low-income youth.
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Shipp was spared the death penalty because he was not legally of age when the crime was committed. He is still in prison.
The first woman
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Pike was the first woman to face execution in the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years.
His lawyers had been trying to appeal his conviction for decades.
In the days before her scheduled death, both the U.S. Supreme Court and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee refused to stop her.
His botched execution shocked and captured the world's attention last month, and, according to her statement, surprised her too.
"I had not considered the possibility of staying alive after that night," he said.
"I am deeply pained by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible situation."
The Tennessee Department of Corrections has not yet explained why the execution did not go as planned, but has defended the effectiveness of the method used.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the rest of the year and ordered an independent review to "determine exactly what happened."
In a court hearing after the failed attempt, the judge ordered authorities to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution attempt, which could serve as the basis for a future lawsuit against the state of Tennessee.
This week, Governor Lee was asked by reporters about a possible second attempt at Pike's execution, to which he responded: "I assume his sentence will remain the same as before, unless the courts determine otherwise.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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