Tennessee Governor Suspends Executions After Christa Gail Pike Survives Lethal Injection: NPR
Emergency vehicles arrive at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the halted execution of Christa Pike on Wednesday, September 30, 2026 in Nashville, Tennessee.
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Authorities in Tennessee were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after she administered two doses of a deadly drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended remaining executions for the rest of the year.
Pike, 50, was alive and snoring loudly after the lethal injection attempt and taken by ambulance from the jail, her lawyers said. She was being treated at the hospital, but they said they had not been informed of her condition.
Her execution was scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the murder she committed when she was 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court halted the lethal injection just an hour before it began, and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.
Authorities gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, his lawyers said at a trial Wednesday evening.
Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he had ordered “a thorough third-party review to determine exactly what happened” and that the remainder of the planned execution will not take place this year.
“Enforcing a lawfully imposed sentence is among the state’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be carried out in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but also effective,” he said.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement that it “followed every step of the state’s legal and established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
The state’s execution protocol calls for a second set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not specify what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unprecedented.”
Seven other people survived medical problems caused by the execution team’s inability to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.
Kathleen Walter prays in the area designated for those opposed to the death penalty outside of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the scheduled execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, September 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Media witnesses detail execution process
Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised the execution room curtains at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.
“I am going to leave this world as I have spent most of my life, which is to say in love,” she said in her “last” words. She describes herself as being at peace.
But Pike stayed awake and, at one point, raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referring to.
At approximately 8:26 p.m., witnesses to the execution reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.
Pike continued to snore behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that point, it was announced that media witnesses had to be escorted from the area.
Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court late Wednesday to immediately halt the execution, saying she was suffering “unnecessary agony” and that it violated her right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit Court and a district court.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee was unable to carry out an execution: In May, state authorities canceled the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of the kidnapping and murder of three people in 1994, after the executioners tried unsuccessfully for more than an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating to death in 1995 Colleen Slemmer, 19, their classmate at a vocational training center in Knoxville. The case attracted widespread attention in part because of a pentagram carved into Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime that fueled fears of Satan worship during the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
The stay of execution was quickly appealed
Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in favor of a stay. That court said time was needed to determine whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully taken into account when determining his sentence.
The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying stopping the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delaying tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.
Later that day, the High Court authorized the execution. The conservative majority did not explain its order, while the three liberal lawmakers signed a dissent saying Pike’s claims merited closer scrutiny.
Pike has not denied committing the murder, but his supporters have argued that the state should consider his age at the time, his mental illness and his allegations of serious sexual abuse.
May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the scheduled execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee.
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This case revives the debate on the death penalty for adolescents
As the execution date approaches, debate resumes on the death penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence was an exception because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee had had such sentences overturned.
After the murder, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her request for clemency, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer, but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put on the brakes.”
“I was an 18-year-old with a mental illness. It took me many years to realize the severity of what I had done,” Pike said in a statement.
Victim’s mother says she awaits death sentence
Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Saturday.
Martinez could not immediately be reached by phone for comment after the execution was halted.
The murder shook the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing that Slemmer was trying to rob her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime occurred and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one to be sentenced to death.
Executions of women are rare in the United States
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1 percent of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. This came more than two years after the state abruptly halted Oscar Smith’s execution and admitted it failed to ensure his lethal injection drugs were properly tested.
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