Christa Pike in critical condition after Tennessee's failed execution attempt

Christa Pike was alive in a hospital bed Thursday morning, receiving emergency medical care, a day after Tennessee's attempt to execute her went catastrophically wrong. She had survived two doses of pentobarbital—the drug the state uses to kill prisoners—after execution staff spent an hour searching for a vein in her arm, ultimately inserting at least seven needles before giving up and transporting her to a medical facility instead of a morgue.

Pike, now 50, had been sentenced to death for a murder she committed at 18. She and her boyfriend killed Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate, in 1995. The case had drawn national attention partly because of a pentagram carved into the victim's body, which fueled fears about satanic ritual. Pike had never disputed her involvement in the killing, though her lawyers pointed to her bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and allegations of severe childhood sexual abuse as context the courts should have weighed more heavily. "It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done," she had said years into her imprisonment.

Wednesday morning, strapped to a gurney in Tennessee's death chamber, Pike told witnesses she was at peace. "I'm ready to be free," she said. "This is a happy day." But as the execution began, something went wrong. The execution team raised the curtain and started trying to establish an IV line. Pike remained conscious. At one point she complained about a sensation in her arm. She even offered guidance to the staff: "Please try here, please try higher on my shoulder," according to her attorney Randy Spivey, who was present as a witness. For more than 90 minutes, Pike lay awake in the chamber while officials worked. When they finally administered the first dose of pentobarbital, nothing happened. They gave her a second dose. Still nothing. Pike could be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone was cut off nearly two hours into the attempt.

What went wrong remains unclear, but Pike's legal team suspects her lifelong blood disorder made it nearly impossible for staff to thread an IV properly into her vein. "Throughout her life, she's explained to us that she had trouble having blood drawn," attorney Steve Ferrell said. It was possible, he suggested, that the drug had been injected into her arm tissue rather than her bloodstream, where it would have circulated through her body. An anesthesiologist from Oklahoma who has witnessed other executions said that if staff used a small vein and injected quickly, the drug could cause burning sensations—consistent with what Pike's lawyers said she experienced.

The failed execution was described by death penalty experts as unprecedented. Seven other people have survived execution attempts when staff couldn't access a vein, but none of them received the lethal drugs. Pike was the first person in American history to receive those drugs and live. Republican Governor Bill Lee called what happened "deeply disturbing" and immediately halted all executions scheduled for the remainder of the year, ordering an independent review of Tennessee's execution procedures. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

May Martinez, the mother of the victim, had traveled to Nashville to witness the execution. She left devastated. "I didn't get justice for my daughter," she told the Associated Press. "I watched the whole thing. She was awake. She was laughing. She was moving her head, moving her feet. She was trying to sit up. Didn't work the first time they gave her a shot. It didn't work the second time."

Pike's attorneys are now seeking to have her death sentence commuted. They filed emergency motions arguing that the execution attempt violated her constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. "We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment," Spivey said at a news conference Thursday. "But we know she is alive right now." Her lawyers also raised the possibility that oxygen deprivation during the prolonged procedure could have caused brain damage.

Tennessee switched to single-drug lethal injections in 2024, moving away from a three-drug protocol. That change came two years after the state had halted another execution and acknowledged it failed to properly test its lethal injection drugs. The state's Department of Correction said it "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office." But the botched attempt has reignited debate over whether pentobarbital, used for executions in multiple states and by the federal government, creates unnecessary suffering. Pike's case now sits at the center of that conversation, with her survival raising questions the legal system has never had to answer before.