Tennessee Woman Christa Pike Survives Lethal Injection, Ends Up in Hospital; Governor Halts Executions
Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death for a 1995 murder Wednesday, media witnesses said, after the lethal injection was halted for hours as courts considered a last-minute appeal of what would have been the state's 1st execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution for a killing she committed at age 18 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start. Officials then attempted to go ahead with it as planned.
Officials appeared to give Pike 2 doses of pentobarbital.
At 7:46 p.m. prison officials closed the curtain to the media room. They raised the curtain three minutes later. Pike could be heard loudly snoring, and the curtain was closed again at 8:06 pm.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at about 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter told media witnesses she was unable to immediately provide information about what happened.
Emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in "unnecessary agony" and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and district court.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that they “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office."
The state's execution 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 spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
Media witnesses and her lawyers said she remained alive afterward: she still had a heartbeat, was audibly snoring or breathing, at times rhythmically, at times labored, and earlier had been conscious enough to complain about pain in her arm: “the vein in my arm feels like it’s about to bust,” or similar phrasing
Her attorneys stated late that night that she was being treated at a nearby hospital and that they had not been told her condition. The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed she survived the protocol doses, said the protocol does not allow further procedures beyond what was done, and confirmed transport to a medical facility. As of the morning of October 1, no official medical summary, vital-status update, or psychological assessment has been made public.
No detailed public update on Christa Pike’s physical or psychological condition has been released beyond the overnight reports from the failed execution.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled."
Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.
The motion also asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures. "Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs."
Pike's death sentence itself has not been vacated. In principle, Tennessee could seek a new execution date after the review and any related litigation.
A further attempt is therefore possible in the more distant future, but it would face substantial practical and legal obstacles: the pending review, likely new claims under the Eighth Amendment arising from the botched procedure and any resulting injury, questions about medical fitness, and the fact that this was already described by death-penalty observers as unprecedented (prior survival cases generally involved failure to establish IV access, not survival after the drugs were administered).
No court has ruled that she is permanently ineligible for execution.
No court has ruled that she is permanently ineligible for execution.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has 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 over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Stay of execution was swiftly appealed
Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike's allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer's body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.
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 their order, while the three liberal members, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, signed a dissent that said 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 court's handling of the case and "unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike's claim."
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 that included being raped from the time she was a toddler.
"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.
Case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens
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 couldn't "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.
Victim's mother says she is waiting for death sentence
Slemmer's mother said she wants 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.
Martinez said her daughter's age also should matter in deciding Pike's fate.
"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 the city of 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, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Executions of women are rare in the US
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it is difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.
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 center.
Most recently, in 2023, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021 the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that it put a female inmate to death.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Background
Lethal injection has been the primary method since 2000. People sentenced for crimes committed before January 1, 1999, may still elect electrocution. The state previously used a three-drug sequence (most recently midazolam, a paralytic, and potassium chloride). In 2022 Lee halted executions after the Oscar Smith case, when an independent review found the department had not followed its own testing and preparation rules. In December 2024 the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) adopted the new one-drug protocol, developed with the Attorney General’s office. A redacted version of the roughly 44-page manual was released in January 2025.
Drug and dose
The chemical listed is pentobarbital: 100 ml of a 50 mg/ml solution, totaling 5 grams. That quantity is split across syringes. The protocol describes a primary set (Set A) and a backup set (Set B). Reporting on the Pike attempt described each administered “dose” as a syringe set of the drug; she received both sets.
Preparation labels in the protocol include:
- 50 ml sterile saline (black label)
- 50 ml of 50 mg/ml pentobarbital (green label), prepared more than once for the set
Set B is prepared only if the inmate is not dead after Set A, a waiting period, and examination by the physician.
How an execution is supposed to run
Executions are carried out at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Key roles include the warden, a Special Operations Team that prepares the chemicals, a Restraint Team, an Escort Team, an IV team (physicians, nurses, EMTs, paramedics, or similarly qualified people), and a physician who pronounces death and can place a central line if needed.
Sequence, as described in the protocol and contemporaneous reporting:
- IV access is established and checked (a camera monitors the site).
- Primary Set A is administered.
- After a waiting period, the physician examines the inmate and reports whether the person is deceased.
- If not deceased, blinds are reopened, Backup Set B is prepared and administered, and the examination steps are repeated.
- The protocol does not say what happens if the person is still alive after Set B. TDOC’s statement after the Pike attempt said the protocol “does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out.”
Other operational rules include semi-annual inventories of the drug plus another inventory 30 days before a scheduled execution, quality-assurance language that is less detailed than the old protocol, monthly practice sessions, and extra practices in the two weeks before an execution. A 12-hour blackout ends non-attorney visits and calls before the scheduled time. Identities of people and suppliers involved in executions are confidential under state law.
What happened with Pike
On September 30, 2026, officials administered both syringe sets. Witnesses reported she still had a heartbeat and was snoring; she was later taken to a hospital. TDOC said it followed every step of the protocol approved by the Attorney General’s office and that the chemical “has consistently been effective.” Lee ordered a third-party review and paused the remaining 2026 execution.
Known disputes
Prisoners have sued over the one-drug protocol, arguing pentobarbital carries a high risk of pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs), which some experts compare to a drowning sensation. Autopsy series cited in that litigation found pulmonary edema in a large share of pentobarbital executions.
Defense experts in Pike’s case had also raised her high platelet count as a possible complication for IV delivery. Those claims were not enough to stop the September 30 attempt.
Source: AP, Staff; DPN, AI, September 30, 2026
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
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