Tennessee | Republicans legislature to investigate other execution methods after failed lethal injections

Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months.

Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for over an hour. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30 before the execution was halted. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, is receiving medical care in a Nashville hospital.

Lee ordered a third-party review and issued a pause on all executions in the state until the end of the year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Franklin Republican and candidate for Senate Speaker, told conservative radio show SuperTalk 99.7 WTN Monday that he supports Lee’s decision to defer executions while the investigation takes place.

“I’m inclined … that if we’re having this much trouble with this particular means of execution, we need to take it off the table and go to something that’s far more reliable and predictable,” Johnson said, listing the electric chair or a firing squad among other potential options.

Gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn said she favors reinstating the electric chair as the state’s primary execution method.

“My colleagues in the General Assembly, if we come to the conclusion that the lethal injection as a means of execution is not reliable enough, and we need to take that off the table, I would like for us to be able to contemplate that before another person is set to be executed,” Johnson said.

Lethal injection has been Tennessee’s primary execution method since 2000. Offenders who were sentenced to death prior to Jan. 1, 1999 can request electrocution as an alternative. Lee paused executions in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and again in 2022 after officials failed to test lethal injection chemicals for endotoxins, a chemical contaminant, before the execution of Oscar Smith, prompting Lee to pause the execution and order an investigation and protocol review.

In 2023, Rep. Dennis Powers, a Jacksboro Republican, introduced a measure that would allow death row inmates to choose to be executed by firing squad as well as by lethal injection or electric chair. The bill failed.

Johnson said he is awaiting legal advice regarding the state’s options for contemplating other means of execution.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Crossville Republican, told SuperTalk 99.7 WTN that he is in favor of “looking at all alternatives,” including the electric chair, firing squad, or hanging, which Tennessee used as its method of execution until 1913.

State Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat, and state Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat and the party’s House caucus chair, called for the legislature to bring back legislative oversight of state agencies.

Johnson and Sexton said Tennessee’s Republican supermajority has no intention of moving away from capital punishment.

Sexton said lawmakers would do their own investigation into the failed executions. He also said the general assembly will “look at speeding up” the appeals process for death row offenders.

“The problem is in the 1970s and 80s, we had the U.S. Supreme Court that put in a lot of parameters and a lot of things that I don’t think are needed, and allowing them to file appeal after appeal and drive up the costs and try to force states not to execute,” Sexton said. “That’s not what we’re going to do.”

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment statutes nationwide in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, finding such statutes imposed in an “arbitrary and capricious” way violated the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Four years later, the court upheld a new set of more specific capital punishment statutes with narrowed eligibility in Gregg v. Georgia.

Johnson said Slemmer’s family waited 30 years for Pike’s sentence to be carried out, and the state failed them.

“I certainly think there should be an appeals process,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t really need to take 30 years.”

Both Johnson and Sexton indicated they expect legal challenges to any changes made to the state’s execution protocol.

“We are going to work with the (Attorney General), with the White House, with others to figure out how to do this effective, efficiently, and swiftly,” Sexton said. “And if we need (it) to be challenged in the court system, then let’s go challenge it. Let’s see what the new U.S. Supreme Court says, and then we’ll go from there.”

Source: tennesseelookout.com, Cassandra Stephenson, October 7, 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

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

Comments

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

Tennessee | Christa Pike’s lawyer says she has not regained consciousness since her failed execution

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday. Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system. When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”

Indiana plans to proceed with execution after botched Tennessee attempt

Indiana prison officials plan to proceed with Jeffrey Weisheit’s Nov. 5 execution after a botched lethal injection in Tennessee prompted that state’s governor to halt executions and order an independent review. The Indiana Department of Correction said Thursday that it remains confident in its procedures despite using the same protocol as Tennessee. Agency officials offered no additional details about the training of those administering lethal injections, the role of medical personnel, or safeguards for execution drugs.

Tennessee Woman Christa Pike Survives Lethal Injection, Ends Up in Hospital; Governor Halts Executions

Tennessee unable to carry out the execution by lethal injection of Christa Gail Pike 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.

Singapore | Ministry of Home Affairs refutes claims that death penalty was discussed during visit by Israel's security ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed." SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Tennessee | Governor permits Christa Pike execution: 'I am upholding the sentence'

Gov. Bill Lee does not plan to stop Christa Pike's execution. Pike, 50, is scheduled to be killed by lethal injection 10 a.m. Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. “After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene," Lee said in a statement released Sept. 28. Pike's attorneys lamented the news.

Florida executes Curtis Beasley

A 77-year-old man convicted of killing a woman with a hammer has become the 16th person executed this year in Florida A 77-year-old Florida man was put to death Tuesday for his conviction in a deadly hammer attack on a woman decades ago, becoming the 16th person executed to date this year in the nation’s busiest death chamber. Curtis Wilkie Beasley was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted of 1st-degree murder, robbery, and grand theft auto in the 1995 hammer attack on Carolyn Monfort at her home south of Orlando.

Florida | He executed death row prisoners. Then they came back to haunt him

Dunnellon, Florida—Every night, one of the men Ron McAndrew killed would sit at the foot of his bed and stare, blankly, into his tortured soul. He knew they were coming. He’d shift over in his sheets to make room. “They never said anything,” McAndrew recalls, his aged voice straining from the weight of the memory. “They just sat there and looked at me.” But their eyes would talk. They would ask, "How could you do such a thing?’” says McAndrew. “You always claimed to be a good person. And now you’re killing people.”

Philippines | President Marcos Grants Absolute Pardon to Mary Jane Veloso

President Marcos Confirms Decision to Grant Absolute Pardon to Mary Jane Veloso President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has signed an absolute pardon for Mary Jane Veloso after more than a decade. On Friday (September 25, 2026), the President confirmed the decision during a visit to Guiuan, Eastern Samar. According to him, the pardon was officially signed the previous day, marking a major development in the case.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog