Tennessee execution fails: Christa Pike survives lethal injection, raising legal questions

Christa Pike survived two injections of pentobarbital on Wednesday evening in Tennessee, her heartbeat continuing, her breathing audible as snoring, while medical staff stood by unable to complete what the state had set out to do. She is now in a hospital in critical condition, and the failed execution has forced Tennessee's governor to halt all further capital punishment in the state for the remainder of the year while a third-party review takes place.

Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for killing Colleen Slemmer a year earlier. Slemmer was 19 when she died. The two met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers, and Pike accused Slemmer of insulting her and attempting to take her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time. Pike carved an inverted pentagram into Slemmer's chest. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the killing and shown them a piece of Slemmer's skull. Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole and remains imprisoned; he was spared execution because he was not yet a legal adult when the crime occurred.

What went wrong on Wednesday remains partly obscured. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not explained why the dosage of pentobarbital administered to Pike proved non-fatal, nor has it addressed claims from Pike's legal team that the drug was degraded. The state's execution protocol does not clearly specify what should happen if an inmate survives a second dose. Part of the execution took place behind a curtain, limiting what observers could see. The department has defended its method, stating that the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out. A federal government review conducted during the Biden administration had raised concerns about pentobarbital's potential to cause unnecessary pain and suffering, leading the federal government to ban its use in federal executions—but that ban does not apply to individual states like Tennessee, which retain authority over their own methods.

Pike's lawyer, Randy Spivey, said on Thursday that she was receiving life-saving measures in hospital but that the legal team had no clear sense of her prognosis or current health status. Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine, told the BBC that it was very possible Pike would suffer brain injury as a consequence of the delay before resuscitation began. The uncertainty about her condition mirrors the uncertainty about what comes next.

Historically, the U.S. Supreme Court has not intervened to stop second execution attempts. In 1947, the court allowed Louisiana to send Willie Francis, a teenager whose first execution attempt had failed when he was 17, back to the electric chair. The court ruled that a second execution would not violate constitutional protections against double jeopardy or cruel and unusual punishment. Francis was executed at age 18. In 2024, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to proceed with a second execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith using an experimental oxygen deprivation method, after their initial lethal injection attempt had failed two years prior. John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death, said of Pike's case: "If the question is, is it likely the federal courts would intervene in a second attempt? I'm afraid the answer is a resounding no."

Tennessee has already experienced execution complications this year. In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed after staff could not locate a vein for injection. He was granted a one-year reprieve by the governor. Across the United States, more than a third of executions in 2022 were botched or highly problematic, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Colleen Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, drove 11 hours from Florida to attend the execution alongside her husband, Raul. She told People magazine: "I wanted her to remember who Colleen was and what they've done and never forget that thought, no matter where she goes." The execution she traveled to witness did not proceed as planned. What Tennessee will do next—whether it will attempt to execute Pike again, whether courts will permit it, and what Pike's condition will be if such an attempt is made—remains undetermined.