Tennessee officials failed to execute Christa Gail Pike by lethal injection Wednesday after administering two doses of pentobarbital, an unprecedented outcome that prompted Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining executions for the year and order an independent review.
Pike, 50, remained alive after the attempted execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and was taken by ambulance to an outside hospital. Her attorneys said she had been loudly snoring after the drugs were administered and that they had not been informed of her condition.
Pike had been sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at a Knoxville job training program. Had the execution succeeded, Pike would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
“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,” Lee said in a statement announcing a “comprehensive, third-party review” of what happened.
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.”
The state’s protocol calls for a second set of drug syringes to be administered if the prisoner remains alive after the first. It does not specify what officials should do if the prisoner remains alive after the second dose.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described the failed execution as “singular and unparalleled.” She said seven other people had survived execution attempts because teams were unable to establish intravenous access, but no one was known to have survived after receiving the drugs intended to cause death.
Pike’s attorneys said the outcome validated concerns they had raised about the execution process, including difficult vein access, damaged veins, the condition of the pentobarbital and the availability of emergency medical care.
Execution stretches for more than an hour
Media witnesses said the curtains to the execution chamber were raised at 7:27 p.m., revealing Pike strapped to a gurney.
“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” Pike said in what were intended to be her final words. She said she was at peace.
But Pike remained awake. At one point, she raised her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did, though it was unclear what she was experiencing.
By 8:26 p.m., witnesses were told that a second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. Pike could later be heard snoring after the curtains were closed. The microphone from the execution chamber was cut off at 8:53 p.m. and media witnesses were escorted from the area.
Pike’s lawyers filed emergency motions seeking to halt the execution, arguing that she was experiencing “unnecessary agony” in violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. They also called on prison officials to begin lifesaving treatment.
The failed attempt was Tennessee’s second aborted execution this year. In May, officials called off the execution of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after spending more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to establish an IV line.
Execution delayed by last-minute court battle
Pike had initially been scheduled to die at 10 a.m. Wednesday, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 about an hour beforehand to stay the execution while considering whether allegations that Pike suffered sexual abuse as a child had been adequately considered during sentencing.
Tennessee’s attorney general appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that another last-minute delay would traumatize Slemmer’s family and reward what the state described as “abusive delay tactics.”
Pike in court as she is sentenced to death, 1996
Hours later, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution. The court’s conservative majority did not explain the decision, while its three liberal justices dissented and said Pike’s claims warranted further examination.
Pike has not denied killing Slemmer. Her lawyers and supporters, however, have argued that her age at the time of the crime, mental illness and allegations of severe childhood sexual abuse should have been given greater consideration.
Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she had intended to fight Slemmer but lost control during the attack.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid,” Pike said in a statement. “It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done.”
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell has called Pike’s death sentence an outlier, noting that other defendants who were 18 when they committed crimes in Tennessee have had their death sentences overturned.
A killing that shocked Knoxville
Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend and lured her into a wooded area in Knoxville on Jan. 12, 1995.
Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt. Pike’s boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, admitted carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s body. The details of the killing attracted national attention amid widespread fears about Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Pike received a death sentence, while her boyfriend was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, traveled to Nashville hoping to witness the execution after waiting more than three decades for Pike’s sentence to be carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez told The Associated Press before the scheduled execution.
Martinez said her daughter remained constantly on her mind and would have turned 51 in September.
Women rarely executed in US
Only 18 women have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, accounting for about 1% of executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year.
Tennessee switched in 2024 from a three-drug lethal injection protocol to a single dose of pentobarbital. The change came more than two years after the state abruptly halted another execution and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.
Lee’s order means Tennessee will conduct no further executions this year while officials investigate why Pike survived Wednesday’s attempt.