Highlights:
Highlights
- Christa Pike survives two lethal injection attempts.
- Tennessee execution raises questions about lethal injection procedures.
- Previous US executions have also been called off.
- Pike's lawyers challenge the failed execution.
- Tennessee orders an independent review of the incident.
Christa Pike, a 50-year-old woman convicted of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, survived two lethal injection attempts on Wednesday (30) in Tennessee. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, traveled from Florida to witness the execution, hoping it would bring an end to a wait of more than three decades. Instead, the execution failed, leaving Pike hospitalized and the family still waiting for justice. "It was a mess," Martinez told NBC News after the failed execution.
Who was Colleen Slemmer?
Colleen was 19 when she met Pike at a job training camp for troubled teens in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1995, Pike, then 18, and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed her.
Before the killing, Pike had accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to steal her boyfriend. The murder set off a media frenzy after Colleen was found with an inverted pentagram, a symbol associated with satanic groups, carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving it. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder and showed them a piece of Colleen's skull.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was spared the death penalty under state law and remains in prison. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996.
For Martinez, the loss has never eased. A group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel to witness the execution, she told the AP.
"Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst," Martinez said.
What happened Wednesday night?
The execution began at about 8 p.m. local time at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike was given two doses of the drug pentobarbital. The curtain in the witness room was closed twice, and media witnesses were at some point asked to leave, the AP reported.
As it was happening, Pike's legal team filed an emergency motion to stop it, saying: "Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring."
One of her attorneys said she was then "being provided life-saving measures" in the hospital. District Judge Clifton L. Corker issued a ruling noting that "medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion".
Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine retained by Pike's legal team, said she likely never reached a blood level of pentobarbital high enough to stop her breathing and heart. "It's very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury," Zivot said in an email.
Her lawyers said they had not been told about her condition.
What happens now?
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he had ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred". He also said the state's last remaining execution of the year would not go ahead as planned.
The Tennessee Department of Correction stands by its actions. "The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office," spokesperson Dorinda Carter told the Tennessean.
"The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility," she said.
Can Tennessee try again?
The state's protocol includes a backup set of syringes if the first doesn't work, but it does not say what happens if the person is still alive after the second set. That leaves Pike's future in legal limbo.
Other states have faced similar situations. Ohio's 2009 attempt to execute Romell Broom failed, and the state's Supreme Court later ruled it could try again, though Broom died of natural causes before it did. In Alabama, Kenneth Smith survived a failed lethal injection in 2022 and was executed by nitrogen gas in 2024. Any new attempt on Pike would likely bring a fresh round of court battles.
It's also the second time this year a Tennessee execution has gone wrong. In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers was postponed after staff couldn't find a vein.
"Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," Pike's legal team said. "We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."
How the Supreme Court shaped the night
The execution went ahead only after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked two separate efforts to stop it. Late Wednesday, the court overturned a reprieve from a lower court that had said it needed more time. It had earlier dismissed an appeal arguing that the jury never weighed evidence of Pike's documented history of childhood sexual abuse.
For years, Tennessee argued in court that Pike lied about being abused. At a recent hearing, however, the state said it did not dispute that she had suffered sexual abuse and rape. Gov. Lee denied her clemency request this week. She is the only woman on Tennessee's death row, and only 18 women have been executed in the U.S. since 1976.
In her clemency petition, Pike said she intended to beat Colleen, not kill her. "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid," she said. "It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."
A family still waiting
Thirty-one years after Colleen was killed, her mother is once again left without the ending she traveled hundreds of miles to see, and with another holiday season ahead.
