Christa Pike is experiencing “profound psychological trauma” more than one week after she survived two lethal injections during her failed execution.
Pike’s attorneys told People on Thursday, October 8, that there are still “significant questions” about the possible “long-term effects” of her botched execution that took place on September 30.
“Christa is dealing with the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution, including the terror, pain and uncertainty of believing she was about to die,” the attorneys said. “We cannot yet know the full emotional and psychological toll of that experience or how long it will take her to begin to heal.”
The legal team added that Pike, 50, has continued “to express concern for others, particularly the family of her victim Colleen Slemmer.”
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 after a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder for beating, torturing and killing Slemmer, who was her classmate at the University of Tennessee, on the school’s campus in 1995. Pike was just 18 when she committed the crime.
She killed Slemmer, 19, alongside her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was sentenced to life in prison because he was a minor at the time. Shipp is eligible for parole, but he is currently in custody after his latest appeal was denied in October 2025.
Pike and her case made headlines after her failed execution. If the execution had been successful, she would have been the first woman in Tennessee to die from the death sentence in 200 years.
Following the botched execution, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered an investigation into what went wrong. He also called off the state’s only remaining lethal injection that was scheduled to take place later this year and announced the upcoming resignation of Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada.
Pike’s attorneys have been keeping the public up to date about her condition in recent days.
Earlier on Thursday, attorney Stephen Ferrell told BBC that Pike was still mentally “foggy.” However, she was making progress physically and was able to move around her hospital room.
“What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” he said.
He then noted that while Pike was able to move “around the room,” she could not go “very far.”
Pike’s mental state is “good and bad,” and Farrell said she “can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going.”
