Anesthesiologist who advised Christa Pike’s defense speaks out against lethal injection
Anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot joined Bill Hemmer to examine the legal consequences of Christa Pike’s botched execution after a judge ordered Tennessee officials to preserve evidence from the procedure. Zivot, who advised Pike’s attorneys, described the complications involving the lethal injection drugs used in the state’s failed attempt. Pike remains on death row.
Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital last week, is now “up and walking,” one of her attorneys said.
Stephen Ferrell told BBC Radio 4 early Thursday that Pike is dealing with serious physical injuries. “What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” he said. Pike walked for the first time that day, though only a short distance around her room.
Ferrell said it was still too early to determine whether Pike had sustained “permanent damage.” He added that her thinking remained “somewhat foggy.”
Christa Gail Pike is shown during her trial for the murder of Colleen A. Slemmer on March 18, 1996, in Knox County Criminal Court. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
“She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going,” Ferrell said.
Neither Ferrell nor a spokesperson for Pike’s legal team immediately responded to requests for comment Thursday morning.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist advising Pike’s lawyers, told Fox News on Thursday that he believed she was still being treated in the intensive care unit.
An undated portrait of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother. (May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)
Randy Spivey, another attorney representing Pike, said outside a Nashville courthouse Wednesday that her legal team had not expected her to regain consciousness. By Monday evening, they believed she was “brain dead.”
“To the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking,” Spivey said. “I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning, but what we do know is that Christa has a long road to recovery.”
Randy Spivey, an attorney for Christa Pike, a death row prisoner who survived a botched execution, speaks to reporters outside a courtroom in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 7, 2026. He is flanked by Luke Ihnen after a Tennessee court received a status update on Pike. (Reuters/Seth Herald)
Spivey said Pike’s first words after waking were, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” He described her as “angry and confused” after the ordeal.
Pike is believed to be the first person in modern history to survive an attempted lethal injection, according to her attorneys and death penalty experts.
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Pike has pneumonia, cannot swallow and developed a blood clot in one arm, Spivey said. He described her hands as appearing “like if you were to blow up a surgical glove” and said he did not know whether she would ever regain full use of them.
University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks testifies about injuries to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull during Christa Gail Pike’s murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court on March 25, 1996. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Davidson County Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles granted Pike’s emergency request Wednesday to preserve evidence connected to the failed execution.
The order directs the Tennessee Department of Correction to retain physical evidence, including needles, IV lines, drug packaging and the drugs themselves. Officials must also preserve text messages, encrypted communications, photographs and recordings, including messages sent through apps such as Signal.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Two other people involved in the killing received lesser sentences: one was 17 at the time, while the other testified for the state under a plea agreement.
Christa Gail Pike appears remotely from Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation during a hearing in Knox County Criminal Court in Knoxville, Tennessee, on August 11, 2026. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
They were all students at Knoxville’s Job Corps Center, a vocational school for youths from troubled backgrounds.
Slemmer was studying computers, an emerging field at the time, then-Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told News Outlet previously.
Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., on Sept. 30, 2026. Pike had not been declared dead when witnesses were asked to leave the room they were in. (Denny Simmons/The Tennessean/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
“She was a bright young woman,” he said. “She had interest in computers. She was applying herself there. She was clearly an innocent party in this.”
After slashing her dozens of times, Pike and her accomplices crushed Slemmer’s skull with a chunk of asphalt. Tadaryl Shipp, who is serving a life sentence and is due for his next parole hearing in 2031, carved pentagrams into her chest and face.
A groundskeeper who later discovered the gruesome crime scene initially thought he’d stumbled upon an animal carcass, before he saw Slemmer’s clothes through the blood, according to court records.
What happens next for Pike remains unclear. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted executions for the rest of the year.
