NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee officials failed to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday after giving her two doses of a lethal drug for a 1995 murder. A death-penalty expert called the breakdown unprecedented, prompting Gov. Bill Lee to suspend the state’s remaining execution for the rest of the year.
Pike, 50, was still alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection, according to her attorneys. She was transported by ambulance from the prison to a hospital, though her lawyers said they had not been informed of her condition.
Her execution had been set for 10 a.m. Wednesday for a killing committed when she was 18. Pike would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. An appeals court issued a stay about an hour before the scheduled procedure, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it several hours later.
Pike received two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings submitted late Wednesday.
Lee said he had ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” He also announced that Tennessee’s other scheduled execution would not be carried out this year.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” the governor said.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
Under Tennessee’s protocol, a second set of syringes is administered if an inmate remains alive after the first set of drugs. The rules do not specify what officials should do if the person survives the second round.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described Pike’s experience as “singular and unparalleled.”
Seven other people have survived execution attempts after problems prevented medical teams from accessing a vein, Maher said. However, she added, no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs typically used in lethal injections.
Media witnesses detail the execution process
Witnesses watching from a separate media room said officials opened the curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., revealing Pike strapped to a gurney.
In what were presented as her final words, Pike said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love.” She also said she was at peace.
Pike did not lose consciousness. At one point, she lifted her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. Witnesses could not determine what sensation she was describing.
By 8:26 p.m., witnesses said officials had administered the second pentobarbital dose.
Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court late Wednesday, asking for an immediate halt to the execution. They argued that she was experiencing “unnecessary agony” and that the procedure violated her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Separate motions were also filed in the Sixth Circuit Court and a federal district court.
The failed attempt marked the second time this year Tennessee has been unable to complete an execution. In May, officials abandoned the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after execution workers spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to establish an IV for the pentobarbital.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 stabbing and beating death of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job-training facility. The case drew national attention partly because a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s body. Other details fueled fears of Satanic worship during the “satanic panic” that spread across the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
Stay of execution was swiftly appealed
Pike’s execution was originally scheduled for the morning, and witnesses had assembled at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution when a divided 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel voted 2-1 to issue a stay. The court said it needed time to examine whether allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately considered during Pike’s sentencing.
The Tennessee attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that a last-minute delay would traumatize Slemmer’s family and reward what it called “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.
Later Wednesday, the Supreme Court authorized Tennessee to proceed. The conservative majority gave no explanation for its decision, while the court’s three liberal justices signed a dissent saying Pike’s claims warranted further review.
Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.
Case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens
As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.
Victim’s mother says she is waiting for death sentence
Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment after the execution was halted.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Executions of women are rare in the US
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.
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