By Isabelle Wilson-
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee officials halted the execution of Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday night after the condemned woman remained alive following two doses of pentobarbital, an extraordinary failure that prompted the governor to suspend the state’s remaining scheduled execution for the rest of the year.
Pike, 50, had been scheduled to die for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a killing she committed when she was 18. Had the execution gone ahead, Pike would have become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries.
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Instead, the execution became an unprecedented episode of embarrassment in the state’s modern history. Pike’s attorneys said she remained alive and was loudly snoring after the lethal injection attempt before being taken by ambulance to a hospital. Her lawyers said they had not been informed of her medical condition.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered a comprehensive independent review of what happened and said the state would not carry out its remaining scheduled execution this year.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities,” Lee said in a statement, adding that Tennesseans expect executions to be carried out in a manner that is legal, constitutional and effective.
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The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials followed every step of the state’s established execution protocol, which had been approved by the state Attorney General’s Office.
According to court filings submitted by Pike’s attorneys, prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital. The state’s execution protocol provides for a second set of drug syringes if an inmate is not dead after the first set, but it does not specify what officials should do if the person remains alive after the second administration.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described Pike’s experience as “singular and unparalleled.” Maher said seven other people have survived medical complications during lethal injections after execution teams were unable to establish intravenous access, but that no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions.
The failure unfolded after a dramatic legal battle earlier Wednesday. Pike’s execution had initially been scheduled for 10 a.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. About an hour before it was due to begin, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay, saying more consideration was needed of Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse and whether those circumstances had been adequately considered when she was sentenced to death.
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that a last-minute stay would further traumatize Slemmer’s family and reward what it described as “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.
The Supreme Court later cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed. The court’s conservative majority did not explain its decision, while its three liberal justices dissented, arguing that Pike’s claims warranted closer examination.
Hours later, witnesses gathered to observe the execution. Media witnesses said officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at about 7:27 p.m., revealing Pike strapped to a gurney.
In what were intended to be her final words, Pike said she was at peace and that she would leave the world “the way I spent most of my life and that is in love.”
But the execution did not proceed as expected. Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. Witnesses could not determine exactly what she was referring to.
By 8:26 p.m., witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. Media witnesses were then ordered to leave the area.
Pike’s lawyers subsequently filed emergency motions with the Tennessee Supreme Court, the 6th Circuit and a federal district court, asking judges to immediately halt the execution. They argued that Pike was experiencing “unnecessary agony” and that continuing the procedure would violate her constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The failed execution was the second time this year Tennessee has been unable to carry out a lethal injection. In May, officials called off the execution of Tony Carruthers, who had been convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners spent more than an hour unsuccessfully attempting to establish an intravenous line for the lethal drugs.
Pike’s case dates back to January 12, 1995, when she and her boyfriend, Tad Shipp, killed Slemmer, their classmate at a job-training facility in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer into a wooded area because she feared Slemmer was attempting to take her boyfriend. Pike then attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt.
Shipp later acknowledged that he carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s body. The brutality of the killing and the pentagram became a major focus of public attention at a time when fears surrounding alleged Satanic activity were widespread in the United States.
Pike did not dispute that she was responsible for Slemmer’s death. Her supporters have instead argued that the state should take into account her age at the time of the crime, her mental health history and allegations that she suffered severe sexual abuse during childhood.
Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder after the killing. In a clemency petition, she said she had initially intended only to fight Slemmer but lost control during the attack.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid,” Pike said in a statement, adding that it took her years to understand the gravity of what she had done.
The case has also renewed debate over the use of the death penalty for offenders who were 18 at the time of their crimes. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell has argued that Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee have subsequently had their sentences vacated.
Shipp, who was 17 when the killing occurred, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only person involved in the killing to receive a death sentence.
For Slemmer’s family, the failed execution prolonged a wait that has lasted more than three decades. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had traveled to Nashville hoping to witness Pike’s execution. She had previously told The Associated Press that she had waited decades for the sentence to be carried out.
The killing devastated Knoxville and has remained one of the city’s most notorious crimes. Martinez has described thinking about the suffering her daughter endured during the attack and imagining her trying to escape.
The events surrounding Pike’s attempted execution have also highlighted the rarity of executions involving women in the United States. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed, accounting for roughly 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year, following an execution in Florida on Tuesday.
Tennessee switched to a single-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital in 2024, abandoning its previous three-drug method. The change 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 had been properly tested.
Now, following the failed attempt to execute Pike, Tennessee faces another examination of its execution procedures. Lee’s decision to suspend the remaining execution scheduled for this year leaves the state to determine how and why a procedure intended to end Pike’s life instead left her alive after two doses of the lethal drug.
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