Anesthesiologist who advised Christa Pike’s defense speaks out against lethal injection
Anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot joins Bill Hemmer to examine the legal consequences of Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike after a judge ordered state officials to preserve evidence. Zivot, who advised Pike’s attorneys, discusses the complications involving the lethal injection drugs used in the failed attempt. Pike remains on death row.
One month after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, death row inmate Christa Pike says she remains in constant pain and had never imagined a future beyond the night she expected to die.
Pike, 50, detailed her condition in a statement dictated to her legal team and released Friday.
“One month ago on September 30, I walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men’s prison prepared to die,” Pike said. “I had made my peace.”
She said she thanked the people who had supported her over the years and told those attending the execution that she was “leaving them in loving kindness.”
An execution gurney is shown alongside a Tennessee Department of Correction booking photo of death row inmate Christa Pike, whose attorneys filed an emergency motion seeking to preserve evidence after the state’s failed execution attempt. (Greg Smith/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images | Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
“Several days later I woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain,” Pike said. “There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike said she had never thought about what her life might look like if she survived the execution attempt.
“I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position,” she said. “I continue to think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured.”
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who was participating with her in a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville.
Christa Gail Pike appears remotely from Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center for her hearing in Knox County Criminal Court in Knoxville, Tenn., on Aug. 11, 2026. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Her statement was released two days after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Pike remains incarcerated under state law and indicated that her death sentence is unlikely to be altered.
Pike’s attorneys have urged Lee to commute the sentence to life in prison without parole following the failed execution.
Pike said Friday that she is recovering but remains in the infirmary at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been largely cut off from other people.
“I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger,” Pike said. “But healing is not the same as being okay.”
“Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me,” she continued. “That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition.”
YOU MAY ALSO READ: Israel's Defence Force releases footage of huge 'Hamas tunnel' – NewsFinale
Randy Spivey, an attorney for Christa Pike, a death row prisoner who survived a botched execution, speaks to the media, flanked by Luke Ihnen, after a Tennessee court was presented a status update on Pike, outside a courtroom in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 7, 2026. (Reuters/Seth Herald)
Pike survived Tennessee’s Sept. 30 lethal injection attempt after receiving two doses of pentobarbital and being rushed to a hospital.
She remained unconscious for several days. At one point, her attorneys believed she was brain-dead and expected doctors to remove her from life support. Pike later regained consciousness and was discharged from the hospital before being returned to prison.
Her attorneys later said Pike was able to walk and speak in complete sentences.
Pike’s survival renewed a decades-long fight over her death sentence and whether Tennessee could attempt to execute her again.
Convicted killer Christa Gail Pike listens to proceedings in April 2008 in Knox County Criminal Court in a bid for a new trial in the 1995 killing of fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
She was 18 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and 19-year-old Shadolla Peterson were charged in Slemmer’s killing. All four were participating in Job Corps at the time.
The three took Slemmer to a secluded area on the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus, where her throat was cut multiple times, she was struck in the head with a large piece of asphalt and a pentagram was carved into her chest.
A split image shows Christa Pike at her murder trial in 1995, left, and Colleen Slemmer, the young woman she was convicted of torturing and killing, on the right. (Reuters)
Pike later confessed to her role in the killing. She was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996, and the Tennessee Supreme Court later affirmed her convictions and sentence.
Following the failed execution, Lee halted Tennessee’s remaining executions for the year and ordered an independent review of what went wrong.
Pike said Friday that she is still trying to understand why she survived.
“I don’t know why I survived that night. I don’t know what comes next,” she said. “Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone.”