Tennessee Death Row Inmate Christa Pike in Critical Condition After Botched Lethal Injections, Attorneys Say

Convicted Tennessee killer Christa Pike is in critical condition after two failed lethal-injection attempts, her attorneys said Thursday, one day after the state tried to execute her for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

“Christa is alive right now,” attorney Randy Spivey told reporters during a Zoom briefing Thursday afternoon. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment.”

Spivey said he could not provide specific information because of limited details and federal HIPAA privacy protections.

“She is in critical condition receiving lifesaving care, that is the extent that we have at the moment,” he said.

Attorney Stephen Ferrell said it appeared the needle “either became dislodged or pierced all the way through the veins,” preventing the injection from being administered properly. He said the attorneys did not have additional medical details because of HIPAA rules.

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she orchestrated the torture and killing of Slemmer, a classmate she viewed as a romantic rival. She was scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years Wednesday evening, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an emergency stay of execution.

The execution team administered two injections at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Neither dose was fatal.

“I’m haunted by last night,” Spivey told reporters during the briefing.

Pike remained conscious and, at one point, lifted her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. Witnesses said she was still breathing after the second dose had been given.

Before Wednesday’s failed execution, Pike had sought an alternative form of capital punishment because she feared the lethal injection might malfunction. Her requests were denied.

Although they declined to discuss specifics because of privacy restrictions, Pike’s attorneys did not dispute that the Tennessee Department of Correction granted her request for an all-female execution team.

Slemmer’s mother drove from Florida to Nashville to witness the execution attempt. She did not respond to News Media’s efforts to reach her.

“I cannot imagine what this was like for the family of Ms. Slemmer, or anyone who loves that family or is close to that family — or anyone who loves Christa or is close to Christa,” Spivey said. “This is awful, and this kind of thing should never happen again.”

Pike was one of three teenagers convicted in Slemmer’s brutal killing. Prosecutors said the victim was tortured, slashed, beaten and ultimately had her skull crushed with a piece of asphalt.

Pike was 18 when the attack occurred in January 1995. She, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and a friend, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer away by telling her they wanted to visit a music store and retrieve marijuana they had hidden in a park near their vocational school.

Pike then attacked her. As Slemmer tried to escape, Shipp grabbed her and held her down, according to court records.

Phil Keith, who was Knoxville’s chief of police at the time, told News Media that the assailants tortured Slemmer for up to an hour before she died. Pike took a piece of her shattered skull as a trophy, which she showed off the next day in school, and Shipp carved pentagrams into her chest and face.

“Pike was the catalyst,” Keith said. “She was the one that was planning out all the events, the luring, all that.”

The failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining scheduled execution this year and order “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”