Date: October 1, 2026
Reporter: Emilly Jordan
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called the failed execution of death-row inmate Christa Pike a “tragedy” and said the incident was “deeply disturbing” after Pike survived two attempts to execute her by lethal injection at a Nashville prison.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a crime Pike committed when she was 18. Instead, the execution was halted after prison officials administered two doses of the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital without killing her. Pike was subsequently taken by ambulance to a hospital, where her lawyers said Thursday that she was receiving life-saving medical care.
“There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen,” Lee told reporters Thursday. “It’s a tragedy, and it’s deeply disturbing to me that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better and we’re going to make sure that happens.”
Lee ordered a comprehensive, third-party review of the failed execution and suspended all remaining executions in Tennessee for the rest of 2026. He said officials did not yet know exactly what went wrong and that the investigation would be intended to establish what happened during the procedure.
Pike's case is unusual because the lethal-injection drugs appear to have entered her body but did not produce the intended result. Her attorneys said two syringes containing pentobarbital were administered. According to their account, Pike experienced severe pain in her arm, which became discolored and blistered, while she remained alive after the injections.
Randall Spivey, one of Pike's lawyers who witnessed the execution attempt, said Thursday that Pike remained alive and that her prognosis was not yet known. He said her lawyers had been informed that she was receiving medical treatment but did not have a full update on her condition.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed the state's established execution protocol. The department has not publicly explained why the two doses of pentobarbital failed to result in Pike's death.
Pike's lawyers have described the experience as “chemical torture” and renewed their request that her death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. They had previously challenged Tennessee's planned use of lethal injection, citing Pike's medical condition and arguing that an alternative method should be considered.
Pike had requested that Tennessee use another method of execution, including hanging or a firing squad, rather than lethal injection. Her legal team had argued that her blood condition created additional concerns about the procedure. Those requests were unsuccessful.
The failed execution followed a series of legal challenges. An appeals court issued a last-minute stay on Wednesday, but the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned that order, allowing Tennessee to proceed with the execution.
Pike would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years. Her case has attracted national attention because of her age at the time of the murder, her history of childhood sexual abuse and her lawyers' arguments concerning her mental-health history. Those circumstances were among the issues raised in unsuccessful efforts to obtain clemency and stop the execution.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job Corps vocational center. Prosecutors said Pike, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and another person lured Slemmer into a wooded area in January 1995, where she was tortured and killed. Pike and Shipp confessed and were convicted.
Because Shipp was 17 at the time of the killing, he was not eligible for the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Pike remained the only defendant in the case facing execution.
The incident also comes months after another failed Tennessee execution. In May, the state halted the lethal injection of convicted murderer Tony Carruthers after prison personnel were unable to establish the required intravenous access for the procedure. That incident led to an earlier temporary suspension of executions in the state.
Tennessee changed to a single-drug lethal-injection protocol using pentobarbital in 2024. The drug is a powerful barbiturate that depresses the central nervous system and has been used in executions by several U.S. states and the federal government. The source of the pentobarbital used in Pike's execution attempt has not been publicly identified.
The failure has renewed scrutiny of lethal-injection procedures in the United States. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described Pike's case as unlike other known botched executions because she apparently survived after the execution drugs had been administered.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also criticized the prolonged suffering associated with failed execution attempts and said Pike's case demonstrated the concerns surrounding capital punishment. His comments were made in the context of broader UN opposition to the death penalty.
The precise medical and procedural reasons for the failure remain under investigation. Governor Lee said Tennessee would seek answers through the independent review before deciding what further action should be taken regarding the state's execution procedures.
For now, Pike remains alive and under medical care, while Tennessee's remaining scheduled executions for 2026 have been suspended pending the review of what happened inside the execution chamber.