After Botched Execution, Lawyers and Experts Urge Tennessee Governor to Commute Death-Row Inmate Christa Pike’s Sentence

Lawyers for Christa Pike are asking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to replace her death sentence with life in prison after she remained alive despite receiving two doses of lethal-injection drugs—an event one death-penalty expert called unprecedented.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a classmate, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving her scheduled execution. Her attorneys said Thursday that she remained in critical condition and was receiving “lifesaving medical care.”

“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” attorney Randy Spivey said at a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now.”

Following the failed execution, Lee suspended further efforts to execute Pike and paused the state’s other execution scheduled for this year. He also ordered an independent review, describing what happened as “deeply disturbing.”

Pike’s attorneys have since intensified their call for her death sentence to be commuted.

They filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking an immediate halt and stay of the execution. The filing said Pike had endured “unnecessary agony” and argued that another attempt to execute her would violate her protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described the failed execution as “completely unprecedented” and likewise urged Lee to commute Pike’s sentence.

“Given the experience that Christa Pike went through last night, after a childhood and young adulthood that was full of gender based violence and abuse, it would be irresponsible for state officials to put her through another attempt at execution,” Maher told News Media. “I really hope that in light of what she’s experienced, that the governor will decide to commute her sentence to a life in prison and not put her through another torturous experience in the execution chamber.”

Before the execution was scheduled, roughly 25,000 people had signed a petition asking Lee to commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison.

An appeals court initially blocked the execution early Wednesday. Hours later, however, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay, allowing Tennessee to proceed.

Pike, 50, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. Her execution also would have made her the 30th person put to death in the United States this year, a figure driven largely by Florida’s record increase in executions since 2025.

Only 18 women have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. They account for about 1% of all executions nationwide.

Pike’s case marked Tennessee’s second failed execution this year. In May, Tony Carruthers—convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994—was not executed after officials could not locate a suitable vein for an IV line. Because the drugs were never administered, the execution did not proceed. Other states have also paused executions after problems accessing a vein.

Tennessee changed its lethal-injection protocol in 2024, replacing a three-drug combination with the single drug pentobarbital. About two years earlier, the state abruptly stopped Oscar Smith’s execution after acknowledging that it had not properly tested the lethal-injection drugs. Smith, who was convicted of first-degree murder, was ultimately executed by lethal injection last year.

Other prisoners have survived medical complications involving difficulties accessing a vein for lethal-injection drugs. Pike, however, was the first person known to remain alive after receiving the drugs.

“This, unfortunately, is not the first time that Tennessee officials have botched an execution,” Maher said. “There is really a quite shameful history in Tennessee of executions going wrong, although Christa Pikes really stands out. There’s never been someone who has received lethal doses of execution drugs and survived until last night. This is a completely unprecedented event, even in the context of Tennessee’s other botched executions.”

The Death Penalty Information Center has documented 65 botched executions in the United States during the modern era.

Inside the execution chamber, Pike said she was at peace and “ready to be free.”

“This is a happy day,” she said.

But she remained awake, and even complained about a feeling in her arm. Witnesses reported that Pike complained of pain in her arm and remained conscious after the first dose.

An hour after officials first raised the curtains, witnesses said that a second dose of pentobarbital was administered. Pike could still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off nearly 30 minutes later.

Pike, who was 18 at the time of the crime, and her then-17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of the fatal stabbing of a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, as he was a minor and not eligible for the death penalty.

The third defendant, then-18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, who acted as a lookout while her two friends carried out the attack, testified for the state and avoided the death penalty.

Pike did not dispute that she helped kill Slemmer, but supporters argued that her mental illness and allegations of severe sexual abuse when she was young should be considered. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder after the killing.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” she previously said. “It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”