Tennessee execution fails as inmate survives two pentobarbital doses

Christa Pike was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution just after 7:30 p.m. on a Wednesday in October, ready to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. She was 50 years old, convicted of torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995 when Pike herself was 18. She told witnesses she was at peace, that she was ready to be free, that it was a happy day. Then the pentobarbital began to flow through the IV in her arm, and nothing went as planned.

For the next hour and a half, Pike remained conscious. She made sounds like snoring—a rhythmic, regular breathing pattern that continued long after she should have been dead. Her head raised slightly off the gurney. She moved her feet. She tried to sit up. When prison officials closed the curtain at 7:46 p.m. to block the witnesses' view, her spiritual adviser left the chamber. When they raised it again three minutes later, as protocol required for a second dose of the drug, Pike was still breathing. Her adviser returned and stood beside her with folded hands while she continued to make those sounds, hour after hour, alive in ways no one in that room had anticipated.

Randy Spivey, Pike's attorney, watched from behind the curtain as the execution team struggled to find a vein. He counted at least seven needles inserted into her left arm. At one point, Pike herself offered guidance to the officials trying to kill her, suggesting they try higher on her shoulder. Around 8:22 p.m., Spivey demanded access to a telephone. He told prison officials the execution must be halted and that Pike needed life-saving medical care. By 8:50 p.m., he had confirmation an ambulance was coming. At 8:53 p.m., witnesses were told to leave. Fire trucks and ambulances arrived at the prison's front gate at 9:14 p.m. Pike was transported to a hospital in critical condition, alive when she should have been dead.

The question of why the pentobarbital failed to kill her remains unanswered by Tennessee officials, who issued a statement saying they had followed protocol and that the drug has consistently been effective. Medical experts offered theories. The most likely explanation, according to specialists quoted in reporting by The New York Times, was that the pentobarbital entered the tissue surrounding the injection site rather than entering her bloodstream directly. That would have prevented the drug from reaching the concentration in her circulatory system needed to stop her breathing. But even if that was what happened, the drug may have lowered her oxygen levels enough to cause brain damage. Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology at Emory University, noted that other possibilities existed: the pentobarbital itself could have been improperly mixed, degraded, or expired. No one knew for certain.

Pike's legal team had warned courts and prison officials before the execution that she had medical conditions making lethal injection particularly dangerous. She suffered from thrombocytosis, a condition involving elevated platelets that could cause blood clotting problems at injection sites or bleeding that could affect her lungs. Medical workers had struggled to draw blood from her in the past. Setting an IV line was always a harder process. Stephen Ferrell, one of Pike's attorneys, said her biggest fear had never been death itself—it was the prospect of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death. That fear, he said, had come true, minus the death.

May Martinez, the mother of the murdered girl, had traveled to Nashville to witness the execution. She watched the whole thing unfold. She saw Pike awake, moving her head, moving her feet, trying to sit up. She did not get justice for her daughter. "This isn't justice for Colleen," Martinez said.

Governor Bill Lee, a Republican who had denied Pike's clemency appeal just days before, called the failed execution a tragedy and deeply disturbing. He suspended all scheduled executions in Tennessee for the remainder of 2026 and ordered a third-party investigation. Pike's lawyers called for her sentence to be commuted to life in prison. Spivey described the process as cruel chemical torture and said he was haunted by what he had witnessed. Pike, meanwhile, remained hospitalized in critical condition, her prognosis unknown, her future uncertain in ways that no execution protocol had contemplated.