Death Penalty News

The lethal drug administered in Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike has been used in multiple states that carry out the death penalty and by the U.S. government after President Donald Trump resumed federal executions during his first term. Pike, 50, remained alive after two doses of pentobarbital were administered Wednesday, according to her attorneys and media witnesses. One of her lawyers said Thursday that she was being treated at a hospital. Tennessee officials haven’t explained yet what went wrong during the execution.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Christa Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, her lawyers said, a day after a failed attempt to execute her pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review. Pike, who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

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. 

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. 

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.

(TNND) — As Tennessee prepares for a Sept. 30 execution, the Tennessee Supreme Court has denied death row inmate Christa Gail Pike’s request to stop it. The court rejected Pike’s challenge to the state’s lethal-injection protocol, finding that her thrombocytosis diagnosis, a condition involving elevated blood platelets, did not show the execution would violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawyers for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a 226-page clemen­cy peti­tion with Governor Bill Lee, ask­ing him to com­mute her death sen­tence to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole ahead of her September 30 exe­cu­tion date. Ms. Pike’s clemen­cy peti­tion out­lines the case her team has built over decades of appeals: her actions at 18 years old can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from a child­hood marked by repeat­ed rape, sex­u­al abuse, and neglect that went unad­dressed by the adults and state sys­tems meant to pro­tect her. Once incar­cer­at­ed, Ms. Pike was diag­nosed with bipo­lar dis­or­der and post-trau­mat­ic stress disorder.

Tennessee’s execution protocol is medically unethical and should be revamped before further executions occur, nearly 40 health care professionals said in a letter to Gov. Bill Lee. Like the coalition of faith leaders who asked for a moratorium on executions earlier this month, the physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals who signed the July 28 letter said they were motivated to speak up after the gruesome and botched execution of Tony Carruthers in May. Carruthers spent 90 minutes bleeding and writhing in agony as an attending physician made repeated unsuccessful attempts to insert an IV into the inmate’s chest after being unable to find useable veins in the arms, legs, and feet. Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve after the ordeal.

Tony Carruthers, a Memphis man on death row, is one of hundreds of people in the U.S. whose executions did not go as planned When the Tennessee Department of Corrections botched Tony Carruthers’ execution, it wasn’t surprising to Austin Sarat. He’s been researching and writing about “state killings” for decades. “Of all of the methods of execution used in the United States over the last 140 years, lethal injection has the highest rate of being botched,” said Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College. He said an execution is botched when it deviates from standard operating procedure or official legal protocol.

Gov. Bill Lee has not responded to calls for a death penalty pause after the failed lethal injection of Tony Carruthers It has been just over a month since executioners in Nashville abandoned the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was strapped to a gurney for more than an hour as they tried and failed to place a secondary IV line. But while Gov. Bill Lee quickly granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve, his administration has not responded to urgent calls for a pause on the state’s death penalty.

Absent court action, Tony Carruthers is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Tennessee on May 21, 2026, despite untest­ed DNA evi­dence, an inno­cence claim, and seri­ous men­tal ill­ness con­cerns . On May 18, faith lead­ers, civ­il rights advo­cates and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers marched to the state capi­tol to urge Governor Bill Lee to grant Mr. Carruthers clemen­cy or stay his exe­cu­tion to allow addi­tion­al DNA test­ing, deliv­er­ing a peti­tion with over 130,000 sig­na­tures. Gov. Lee announced on May 19 that he has no plans to inter­vene and stop the exe­cu­tion. Mr. Carruthers’ case has drawn nation­al atten­tion as his sched­uled exe­cu­tion date nears, includ­ing from celebri­ty Kim Kardashian, who urged her 345 mil­lion Instagram fol­low­ers to call Gov. Lee’s office to press for the DNA test­ing, and from Demetrius Minor, the Executive Director of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

If Christa Gail Pike's execution proceeds as planned next year, she will become the first woman put to death in Tennessee since the state began to formally document capital punishment more than a century ago. After attempted appeals by Pike's attorneys repeatedly failed, the Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday set a date for her to be executed. The order granted a scheduling request from the state for the death warrant to be carried out Sept. 30, 2026, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, which houses a majority of Tennessee's death row inmates. Under the terms of this week's state Supreme Court order, the prison warden is obligated to notify Pike of the method that the Department of Correction will use to execute her by Aug. 28. 

The Tennessee Supreme Court has scheduled four more executions, even as questions linger about a lethal injection in August. The executions are scheduled throughout 2026. The first, Tony Carruthers, is set for May 21. The executions of Anthony Hines, Christa Pike and Gary Wayne Sutton would follow. If the state carries out Christa Pike’s death sentence, she will be the first woman to be put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years, according to The Tennessean.

From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A Knox County judge has rejected a bid to vacate the death sentence of Christa Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee and the youngest American woman to be sentenced to death since 1972. Pike and two others were convicted in the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer when all four teens were participating in Job Corps, a federal jobs training program for troubled adolescents, in Knoxville. Pike, 18 at the time, became the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the United States since 1972. Tadaryl Shipp, 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus 25 years. Shadolla Peterson, 19, received probation after turning informant for the state’s case against Pike and Shipp.

Attorneys for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a motion on August 30 to re-open her appeals based on a recent decision from the Tennessee Supreme Court.  In 2022, the Court ruled in State v. Booker that mandatory life sentences in homicide cases are unconstitutional when imposed on juveniles, drawing on U.S. Supreme Court precedent that held that juveniles are less mature, more vulnerable to peer pressure, and generally less culpable than adults.  Ms. Pike’s attorneys argue that Booker’s reasoning applies to all youthful defendants, not just minors. 

What's the difference between being 17 years old and being 18? In Christa Gail Pike's case, her lawyers say, the difference is a death sentence. The state wants to set an execution date for Pike, now 45 and the only woman on Tennessee's death row. She was 18 years old when she and two other participants in a Knoxville job program for troubled teens killed Colleen Slemmer in a remote spot on the University of Tennessee's agriculture campus.

Several years ago, in the middle of the Christian Holy Week leading up to Easter, an execution team strapped Jeannie Alexander onto a gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Christa Pike was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1995 death of Colleen Slemmer. KNOXVILLE (WATE) – After more than two decades on death row, a federal court has denied to overturn Christa Pike’s conviction and death penalty sentence. A federal court ruled that Pike doesn’t have grounds for a federal appeal and that she has exhausted Tennessee state appeals.  Pike was convicted in the 1995 death of Colleen Slemmer, 19.  Prosecutors say Pike tortured Slemmer, beat her to death, and then kept a piece of her skull as a trophy. Pike appealed her conviction and death penalty sentence in 2012. Slemmer’s mother has been fighting to get back the rest of her remains, which are being held as evidence, for a proper burial. A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office says Pike has completed all appeals at the state level. Source : wate.com , Staff, March 10, 2016 "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have commit...