Tennessee’s Attempt to Execute Christa Pike Falters After Two Lethal Injections

Tennessee officials could not execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday for the 1995 murder after delivering two doses of the lethal drug; a death‑penalty expert called the outcome unprecedented.

After the failed lethal injection, Pike remained alive and was heard snoring loudly; prison staff transferred her by ambulance to a hospital, though her lawyers said they were not informed of her condition.

Pike, aged 50, was slated for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for a crime she committed at 18; she would have become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in over two centuries. An appeals court halted the injection about an hour before it was to begin, but the U.S. Supreme Court later lifted that stay.

Read moreU.S. Supreme Court clears the path for Tennessee to proceed with the execution of a woman convicted of murder

Officials administered two doses of pentobarbital to Pike, according to court filings submitted by her attorneys late Wednesday.

The Tennessee Department of Corrections stated that it “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

The state’s execution protocol requires a backup set of drug syringes to be given “if the inmate is not deceased” after the initial dose, but it does not specify what should occur if the individual remains alive after the second set.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described Pike’s experience as “singular and unparalleled.”

She noted that while seven other individuals have survived medical complications stemming from execution teams’ inability to locate a vein for lethal‑injection drugs, no one has remained alive after actually receiving the drugs used in such procedures.

Media witnesses observing from an adjacent room said officials opened the curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., revealing Pike strapped to a gurney.

“I’m leaving this world the way I lived most of my life—in love,” she said in what were described as her final words, adding that she felt at peace.

Yet Pike stayed awake; at one moment she lifted her head and asked prison staff whether her arm was supposed to feel that way, though it remained unclear what she meant.

By 8:26 p.m., witnesses to the execution reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been given.

Pike’s snoring continued to be audible behind the closed curtain until the microphone was turned off at 8:53 p.m., at which point an announcement was made to escort the media witnesses from the area.

Late Wednesday, Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court requesting an immediate halt to the execution, arguing that she was undergoing “unnecessary agony” and that the process violated her right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment; they also submitted motions to the Sixth Circuit Court and the district court.

This marked the second occasion this year that Tennessee failed to carry out an execution. In May, state officials cancelled the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers—convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994—after execution crews spent more than an hour attempting, unsuccessfully, to insert an IV for pentobarbital administration.

Pike and her boyfriend were found guilty of the 1995 stabbing and beating of 19‑year‑old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job‑training facility. The case attracted widespread attention because a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s body and other details fueled fears of Satan worship during the satanic‑panic era of the 1980s and 1990s.

Pike had originally been slated for execution that morning, and spectators had assembled at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2‑1 to grant a stay. The court said a pause was necessary to determine whether Pike’s claims of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately weighed during sentencing.

The Attorney General’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that delaying the execution at the last minute traumatized Slemmer’s family and amounted to rewarding “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.

Later that day, the high court cleared the path for the execution to move forward. The conservative majority issued no explanation for its order, whereas the three liberal justices filed a dissent maintaining that Pike’s claims warranted closer scrutiny.

Pike did not deny responsibility for the killing, but her advocates urged the state to take into account her age at the time of the offense, her mental health condition, and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

As the execution date approached, renewed debate emerged concerning the death penalty for youthful offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell observed that Pike’s death sentence is an outlier, noting that other 18‑year‑olds in Tennessee have had similar sentences overturned.

Following the killing, Pike received diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post‑traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she stated that she had intended only to confront Slemmer but ended up killing her in a frenzied attack because she felt unable to “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18‑year‑old,” Pike said in a statement. “It took me many years to fully grasp the seriousness of what I had done.”

Slemmer’s mother visited the prison hoping to witness the lethal injection, saying she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I picture Colleen experiencing that pain and struggling to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a Saturday telephone interview.

Martinez added that her daughter’s age should also be considered when determining Pike’s fate.

“Not a day—or even a minute—passes without me thinking about Colleen,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 in September.

The killing shook Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was attempting to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on January 12, 1995. Pike sliced Slemmer with a box cutter and struck her repeatedly with a large piece of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, admitted that he carved the pentagram—a star‑shaped symbol linked to Satan—into Slemmer’s body.

Shipp was 17 at the time of the crime and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole; Pike was the sole individual sentenced to death.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed, accounting for roughly 1 percent of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Had the execution proceeded, Pike would have become the 30th person put to death in the United States this year, following Florida’s execution on Tuesday.

In 2024 Tennessee announced it would move from a three‑drug lethal‑injection protocol to a single drug, pentobarbital. The change came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith, admitting it had failed to properly test its lethal‑injection drugs.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)

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