Christa Pike’s legal team says Pike has wrongly been held in isolation as she recovers from her failed execution in Tennessee.
Her attorneys challenged the current conditions of her incarceration with an emergency motion filed in federal court on Friday, October 30, calling on the court to enforce a 2024 settlement agreement that ended 28 years she previously spent in solitary confinement.
The motion argues prison officials are breaching the settlement agreement previously reached with the state “by holding Ms. Pike in indefinite isolation in the prison infirmary following the Tennessee Department of Correction’s failed execution that left her gravely injured.”
Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, survived two injections of pentobarbital on September 30, when she was scheduled to be executed.
“She spent multiple days on a ventilator and over a week in the medical intensive care unit at a hospital following the State’s disastrous execution attempt,” an attorney for Pike, Angela L. Bergman, wrote in the motion.
After Pike’s hospital discharge on October 9, she remained isolated from other inmates at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, in violation of the 2024 settlement agreement, according to the filing.
“They are denying her the opportunity to work, eat, and otherwise socialize with any other women at DJRC as set out in the Agreement,” the filing states, adding that prison officials “refused Ms. Pike’s reasonable request to be housed with other women receiving temporary medical care.”
In a declaration in support of the emergency motion, Pike detailed the current conditions of confinement, writing she’s enduring isolation while suffering injuries from her botched execution, including “severe burns, nerve damage, difficulty sleeping and severe psychological trauma.”
Tennessee Department of Correction Communications Director Dorinda Carter declined a request for comment from Us via email on Monday, November 2.
“It is our policy not to comment on pending litigation,” Carter said.
In the declaration dated October 29, Pike wrote that she’s only been allowed contact with limited staff, medical personnel, her spiritual advisor and legal team.
She also allegedly has to use a shower with an insect infestation.
“I have a roach-infested shower that I had to clean on my own, which puts me at a high risk of infection and further injury,” Pike wrote.
“This renewed isolation, coming right after the execution attempt and after twenty-eight years of solitary confinement, is causing me serious psychological harm and trauma,” Pike concluded in her declaration.
“Each day I remain in isolation adds to that harm,” Pike added.
The state has until November 4 to file a response to her attorneys’ emergency motion.
The motion was filed the same day Pike released her first public statement through her legal team since she survived the execution attempt.
Pike wrote in the statement that she “was prepared to die” the evening of September 30.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said.
Pike was sentenced to death after she was convicted of killing her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had traveled to Tennessee from Florida to attend Pike’s execution.
