NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee officials failed to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday after administering two doses of a lethal drug in connection with her 1995 murder conviction. A death penalty expert called the incident unprecedented, while Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended the state’s remaining scheduled 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 taken by ambulance from the prison to a hospital, though her lawyers said they had not been informed of her condition.
Her execution had been scheduled 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 halted the lethal injection about an hour before it was scheduled to begin, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay 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 remaining 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,” Lee said in a statement.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials had “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
Under Tennessee’s execution protocol, a second set of drug syringes is to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. The policy does not specify what officials should do if the person remains alive after the second dose.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described Pike’s experience as “singular and unparalleled.”
Seven other people have survived serious problems during executions after teams failed to establish a vein for lethal injection drugs, Maher said. However, she said no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions.
Media witnesses detail the execution process
Media witnesses watching from a separate room said officials opened the curtains to the execution chamber 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 during what were intended to be her final words. She also said she was at peace.
Pike remained conscious, however, and at one point lifted her head to ask prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. She did not explain what she was feeling.
Witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered by 8:26 p.m.
Pike could still be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was shut off at 8:53 p.m. Officials then announced that media witnesses would be escorted from the area.
Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion late Wednesday with the Tennessee Supreme Court, asking it to immediately stop and stay the execution. They argued that she was enduring “unnecessary agony” and that the attempt violated her constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The attorneys also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit Court and a district court.
It was the second failed execution attempt in Tennessee this year. In May, officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to place an IV for the pentobarbital.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 fatal stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case drew extensive attention partly because a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s body. Other details of the crime fueled fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Stay of execution was swiftly appealed
Pike’s execution was initially set for the morning, and witnesses had gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay, saying it needed time to examine whether allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been fully considered during Pike’s sentencing.
The Tennessee attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that stopping the execution at the last minute had traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded what it characterized as “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.
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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