Tennessee Execution Attempt Fails; Christa Pike Alive After Two Doses, Lawyers Say

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee prison officials failed Wednesday to execute Christa Gail Pike for a 1995 murder, even after administering two doses of a lethal drug, her attorneys said, leaving the 50-year-old inmate alive and loudly snoring after the attempt.

Pike was taken by ambulance from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and was being treated at a hospital, her lawyers said. They said they had not been told about her condition.

The failed lethal injection — described by a leading death penalty expert as 'singular and unparalleled' — prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt executions for the rest of the year and order a comprehensive, third-party review into what occurred. The episode is expected to intensify scrutiny of the state's execution protocol and renew broader questions about how states carry out capital punishment.

Pike had been scheduled to be put to death at 10 a.m. Wednesday for a killing she committed at age 18. She would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was set to begin, but hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay. Officials then gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday.

Lee said in a statement that he had ordered 'a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred' and that the state's remaining scheduled execution would not take place this year.

'Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State's most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,' Lee said.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it 'followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office.'

The state's protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered if the inmate is not deceased after the first set. It does not specify what should happen if the inmate remains alive after the second set.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced was 'singular and unparalleled.' In seven other cases, she said, inmates survived after execution teams failed to access a vein and never delivered the lethal injection drugs. But no one had remained alive after actually receiving the drugs used in such executions, Maher said.

Witnesses describe a drawn-out scene

Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

Pike remained awake. At one point, she raised her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.

By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike could still be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m., when an announcement was made to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter told media witnesses she could not immediately provide information about what had happened.

Pike's lawyers filed an emergency motion late Wednesday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in 'unnecessary agony' and that the state was violating her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions with the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and a district court.

The motion asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures. 'Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs,' it said.

A 1995 killing that drew national attention

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the fatal stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case drew widespread attention in part because a pentagram was carved into Slemmer's body and because other elements of the crime fed fears of Satan worship during the 'satanic panic' of the 1980s and 1990s.

It was the second time this year that Tennessee had been unable to carry out an execution. In May, state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for more than an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at Riverbend when the Sixth Circuit voted 2-1 to issue a stay. The court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike's allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been fully weighed at her sentencing.

The attorney general's office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer's family and rewarded 'abusive delay tactics' by Pike's attorneys.

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain its order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent saying Pike's claims deserved a closer look.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision to vacate the stay interfered with the Sixth Circuit's handling of the case and 'unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike's claim.'

Legal fight centered on age, abuse and mental illness

Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

'It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant's moral culpability,' her attorneys wrote in a filing.

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike's death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she could not 'put the brakes on.'

'I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,' Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer's mother has said she wanted the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike's sentence carried out.

'Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,' May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.

'Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,' she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 in September.

The killing rocked Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike's boyfriend, admitted that he carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into Slemmer's body.

Shipp was 17 at the time of the crime and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Colleen Slemmer was Pike's classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

This story has been updated with additional information.