Christa Pike Complained of Decades in Solitary Before Failed Execution

Christa Pike survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her Wednesday night ... and years before the botched lethal injections, she was fighting the state over another part of death row -- decades spent virtually alone in solitary confinement.

In a 2022 federal lawsuit, obtained by TMZ, Pike asked to be released from mandatory segregation ... with her attorneys saying she had spent more than 25 years with virtually no meaningful human contact.

Her lawyer wrote Pike's life had been defined by "four concrete walls and bare floor" ... adding, "She is fundamentally alone."

The suit says Pike was confined for 22 to 24 hours a day in a roughly 7-by-12-foot cell containing only a bed, shelves, sink and toilet.

Her weekday recreation, according to the filing, was an hour inside an empty concrete cage -- and even that depended on staffing and weather.

Pike's attorneys said she was generally confined continuously from Friday evening through Monday morning and ate every meal inside her cell.

They also claimed she was barred from contact visits with family, attorneys and spiritual advisers from at least 2019 until June 2022.

Her lawyers argued the setup was especially isolating because Pike was Tennessee's only woman sentenced to death.

Male death-row inmates, they said, could socialize with one another, work jobs and attend educational and religious programs ... while Pike had nobody else in her classification to interact with.

The lawsuit also alleged the prolonged isolation seriously damaged Pike's physical and mental health and asked a judge to exempt her from mandatory segregation and allow her meaningful human contact.

A settlement agreement was reached between the prison officials and Christa ... where the prison didn't acknowledge any merit to those claims but agreed to allow her to have increasing interactions with others ... which went into effect on July 24, 2024.