Convicted Murderer Christa Pike Survives 2 Lethal Injections

Tennessee has halted executions after inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of a lethal injection drug, the state’s governor said, and ordered an independent review into what went wrong.

Governor Bill Lee said he had paused a second execution scheduled for later this year after the Wednesday attempt in which Pike remained alive after receiving pentobarbital. Lee said Pike’s health status was not known as of Thursday.

Pike Remained Alive After Two Doses

Christa Pike, 50, was declared not deceased after two doses of pentobarbital, according to attorneys and witnesses who spoke after the attempt. They said she was still conscious and snoring loudly after the second dose and was taken to a hospital.

Witnesses told reporters that officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27pm, with Pike strapped to a gurney. She made remarks described by media as her “last” statement, including that she would leave the world “in love”.

Picture courtesy of EL PAIS

After the first dose, Pike was reported to have remained awake. A Nashville Banner reporter, Steven Hale, said she lifted her head off the gurney at 7:54pm and asked whether her arm was meant to feel a certain way. Another journalist, Tori Gessner of WKRN News 2, said Pike pointed at her arm and asked if the sensation happened “like that”.

By 8:26pm, witnesses said the second dose had been administered. Pike was heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53pm, when an announcement was made for media witnesses to leave the area.

Lee Orders Third-Party Review

Lee said he ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that another execution later this year had been paused. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, he said there were “very few answers” and that Tennessee residents deserved questions answered.

Lee described the incident as deeply disturbing and said no one wanted what happened to occur.

Pike’s legal team said in a statement to the Tennessean that the state again failed to carry out a lawful execution. They cited claims of difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, lack of emergency medical care and a protocol they said remained secret.

Tennessee’s Department of Correction said it followed the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office. That protocol provides for a secondary set of drug syringes “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set, but does not specify what happens if the subject is still alive after the second set.

Court Delays, Victims’ Family React

Pike had been scheduled to die at 10am on Wednesday for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, an 18-year-old. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

An appeals court had stopped the lethal injection shortly before it was due to begin, but the stay was overturned by the US Supreme Court.

May Martinez, the mother of Slemmer, told NBC News the execution attempt was a “mess”. She said victims’ families were instructed to leave, and that they learned only later through the commissioner that the drugs had not worked and Pike was taken to hospital.

Christa Pike Execution Faces Last-Minute Legal Fight

In a statement posted on Facebook, US Senator Marsha Blackburn called for Tennessee to return to executions by electric chair. She said the failed process extended pain for the victims’ families, while adding that a review should still be completed.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced was “singular and unparalleled”. Maher said seven other people had survived medical problems linked to an execution team’s failure to access a vein, but no one had remained alive after receiving lethal injection drugs.

How Common Are Botched Executions?

The Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks execution attempts, said it has documented 64 well-known botched execution attempts in the United States between 1982 and the first half of 2026. Of those, it said seven ended in failure. The most recent previous documented failure before Pike involved Tennessee inmate Tony Carruthers, whose execution was halted after staff could not find a vein to administer a lethal drug.

DPI figures cited in the report estimate that, historically, around 3% of attempted executions between 1890 and 2010 were flawed. For lethal injection specifically, it said 7.2% of attempts were botched, compared with a 3.15% rate across all methods. The centre has also said experts have pointed to challenges including inserting intravenous lines, issues about the drugs used and the ethical constraints on doctors participating in executions.

Criticism of botched-execution classifications has also been raised. Michael Conklin, an assistant professor of business law at Texas A&M University–Central Texas, argued in a 2020 paper that some cases counted as botched involved prisoner resistance, difficulty placing an IV, or errors such as opening the curtain too early.

DPI said Tennessee has previously faced problems with its execution process. In April 2022, Lee called off an execution of Oscar Smith after the state discovered the lethal drugs had not been properly tested. An independent investigation found failures to follow drug-testing protocols between 2018 and 2022.

This year, Carruthers was scheduled for May 21 but officials abandoned the attempt after they could not establish intravenous access. DPI also noted that in 2025 there were 47 executions, including cases where South Carolina inmate Marion Bowman received twice the intended dose, and Tennessee inmate Byron Black reportedly showed sustained cardiac activity for nearly two minutes after staff pronounced him dead.

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1 October 2026