Christa Pike called a botched lethal injection her “worst nightmare” in a prison recording made just weeks before her own failed execution.
Pike, 50, said she feared suffering the same fate as Tony Carruthers, another Tennessee death-row inmate whose lethal injection was halted in May.
“The concerns I have on our lethal injection method are simply that I do not have good veins, and I’m worried about our physician not being qualified to start a central line on me,” Pike said in a recording obtained by The New York Times.
“Tony Carruthers lived out my worst nightmare. Detail for detail. And I don’t want to go through that.”
Pike had been scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years on Wednesday. Instead, after two failed attempts to administer the lethal drugs, she was taken to a hospital.
Her lawyers said she was in critical condition and receiving lifesaving treatment, adding that she may have suffered brain damage during the botched execution.
Pike said in the recordings that her fears were intensified by descriptions comparing the lethal-injection drugs to the chemical drain cleaner Drano.
“The drug… supposedly burns very bad. And so that sounds scary to me because they used the word Drano in speaking about this drug, and the thought of suffocating and drowning on my own bodily fluid and blood isn’t very appealing to me.”
YOU MAY ALSO READ: Cornell Sexual Assault Case Spotlights New York Law on Intoxicated Victims
Follow live updates on murderer Christa Pike, the first death row inmate in history to survive lethal injection
She also expressed remorse for the brutal torture and murder of her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in January 1995.
“I’m very remorseful now. I wasn’t in the beginning when I first caught this charge. I didn’t care what I had done or who I had done it to,” Pike said.
“The horror of the pain that I caused her family, my family, my co-defendant’s families, I have affected this world in such a negative way when all I ever wanted to do was care for people and leave love. I have done the opposite of that and that pains me.”
Maria DeLiberato, Carruthers’ lawyer, told The Post in a statement Thursday that Pike’s failed execution had placed her “right back in that room with Tony” during his execution attempt last May.
Here’s the latest on the botched execution of Tennessee murderer Christa Pike:
“We are joining the calls for a commutation for Christa, so she never experiences this torture again,” DeLiberato said.
“Moreover, we continue to ask the same for Tony, who is still recovering from his botched attempt and fighting to prove he was wrongfully convicted – all while he remains at risk of another execution attempt.”