NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Queen City Newsfeed), Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her Wednesday night. Her attorneys say she remains alive in a hospital, where she is receiving lifesaving medical care.
Prison staff at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, the only drug Tennessee now uses for lethal injections. Neither dose killed her. State officials then moved Pike, 50, to an outside medical facility.
Gov. Bill Lee responded Thursday by stopping the state’s only other execution scheduled for 2026. He also called for a full independent review of what went wrong.
What Witnesses Saw
Before the process began, Pike delivered a final statement and sang with her spiritual adviser, according to media witnesses. They later described her breathing heavily, moving her head and legs, and eventually snoring.
Staff closed the chamber curtain around 7:46 p.m. while Pike still breathed clearly. Witnesses said they could hear her snoring through the curtain until the warden ordered them out at 8:53 p.m.
Her attorneys filed emergency motions while the attempt was still underway. They told the courts Pike had not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat.
Attorney Randy Spivey called the process cruel and tortuous, saying he was “haunted” by what he saw after the execution team struggled to find a vein for the lethal drugs. He said he counted at least seven needles in her left arm.
According to the Associated press, during the struggle to locate a vein, Pike even suggested where they might find a spot, he said.
“Please try here, please try here,” Spivey recalled her saying. “She told them over and over, please try higher on my shoulder.”
State Says It Followed Protocol
The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed late Wednesday that Pike went to a medical facility. The department said its team followed every step of the state’s approved execution protocol.
Pike’s legal team sees it differently. In a statement, her attorneys said the state “once again failed to carry out a lawful execution.”
Attorney Steve Ferrell said the outcome came as no surprise to the defense. “All of this was predicted, and the court did nothing,” he told CBS News.
Pike had sued the state over its lethal injection method. She argued that a lifelong blood disorder made the procedure especially dangerous for her. Her attorneys also raised her history of sexual abuse and post traumatic stress disorder in their final appeals.
The 1995 Murder
Pike was convicted in the 1995 torture and killing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job training program for teens. Pike was 18 at the time. She is the last person Tennessee sent to death row for a crime committed at that age.
Had the execution succeeded, Pike would have become the first woman Tennessee executed in more than 200 years.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, traveled to Nashville to witness the execution. She told NBC News the attempt was a mess.
How Often Executions Go Wrong
Pike’s case marks Tennessee’s second failed execution in less than five months. In May, Gov. Lee ordered a halt to Tony Carruthers’ lethal injection after the team spent more than an hour unable to place a backup IV line.
The Death Penalty Information Center tracks well documented cases of botched executions since the U.S. reinstated capital punishment in the 1970s. Carruthers became the 64th entry on that list, and the center has already added Pike as the 65th. Lethal injection accounts for 51 of the earlier cases, including seven executions that stopped because staff could not set an IV. The center notes that its list does not capture every problem.
Amherst College professor Austin Sarat studied executions in the U.S. from 1890 to 2010. He found that 276 of 8,776 executions in that span went wrong in some way, a rate of about 3 percent. Lethal injection had the highest failure rate of any method Sarat examined, at roughly 7 percent. His later research put the rate for lethal injections between 2010 and 2020 at 8.4 percent.
The problem peaked in 2022, when seven of 20 execution attempts nationwide ran into visible trouble. The Death Penalty Information Center labeled it the year of the botched execution.
Not everyone accepts those numbers. Critics of Sarat’s research argue that his definition of a botched execution is too broad. They point out that he counts events such as a difficult IV placement or a delay before officials declare death.
What Comes Next
Attorneys say they still do not know Pike’s prognosis. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now.” Lee has paused executions while the independent review moves forward, and state officials have not said when it will finish.
