Tennessee Woman Survives Botched Execution After Two Lethal Injection Doses

Christa Pike survived an attempted lethal injection in Tennessee on Wednesday night despite being administered two doses of pentobarbital, prompting a halt to the state’s remaining execution this year and an independent review of what went wrong.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was strapped to a gurney at a Tennessee prison after a series of last-minute legal appeals delayed her execution from the morning to the evening.

Media witnesses later described an execution unlike anything they had previously observed. Pike appeared to remain alive after the drugs were administered, with witnesses reporting that she was breathing, moaning and loudly snoring.

“It went really poorly,” Catherine Sweeney, a reporter for WPLN who has covered executions in Tennessee, said.

Her lawyers said Thursday that Pike was in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical treatment. Attorney Randy Spivey called on Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence, saying she had suffered punishment “greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.”

Execution Delayed By Hours

Pike’s execution was originally scheduled for Wednesday morning, but last-minute legal proceedings pushed it back to the evening.

According to WKRN reporter Tori Gessner, media witnesses entered the witness chamber at 6:41 p.m. The blinds separating them from the execution chamber opened at 7:26 p.m., when Pike delivered her final statement.

At 7:34 p.m., Pike reportedly said her arm felt as though it was about to burst. Over the following minutes, witnesses said she appeared to be talking, breathing, moaning and snoring.

The blinds were closed at 7:46 p.m. and reopened three minutes later. Pike was still reportedly snoring with her mouth open.

The blinds were lowered again at 8:05 p.m. and remained closed until the witnesses were escorted out at 8:53 p.m.

The witnesses said they were left with little understanding of what was happening behind the closed blinds.

“I cannot emphasise enough how much of whatever just happened, happened behind a closed curtain when Christa Pike was still alive,” Nashville Banner reporter Steven Hale said.

WBIR journalist John North said the intermittent closing and reopening of the blinds raised questions about what officials were doing inside the execution chamber.

“It appeared that this did not go like they thought it was supposed to go,” he said.

Lawyers Cite IV Problems And Drug Concerns

Pike’s legal team said the execution team spent about an hour attempting to establish an intravenous line and used at least seven needles in her left arm.

Her attorneys pointed to difficult vein access, blown veins, concerns over degraded pentobarbital and the absence of emergency medical care inside the execution chamber as possible factors.

“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true,” attorneys Spivey and Kelly Gleason said.

Another member of Pike’s legal team, Stephen Ferrell, said none of her lawyers had seen her following the execution and declined to speculate about her condition or what she was experiencing.

Ferrell said Pike had feared not death itself but a prolonged and traumatic death.

“That’s what happened, minus the death,” he said.

Governor Orders Review And Pauses Execution

Gov. Bill Lee announced that Tennessee would call off its final remaining execution scheduled for this year while a third-party review examines the Pike case and determines what happened.

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office also said an investigation was necessary.

Lee had previously paused executions in 2022 after saying he learned that proper procedures for testing lethal-injection drugs had not been followed.

The latest incident follows other execution problems in Tennessee, including a failed execution attempt earlier this year.

Critics of capital punishment have renewed calls for executions to be halted in Tennessee and in other US states that retain the death penalty.

Tennessee Says Protocol Was Followed

The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials followed the state's established execution protocol throughout the procedure.

The department said the lethal-injection chemical specified in the protocol had consistently been effective and that the protocol did not permit officials to carry out additional procedures beyond those performed.

Pike was subsequently taken to an off-site medical facility.

Tennessee's lethal-injection procedure is contained in a 44-page Department of Correction document obtained by the Death Penalty Information Center. The protocol specifies a one-drug method using pentobarbital.

Under the procedure, officials prepare a primary dose and a backup set in case the prisoner is not deceased after the first administration.

However, the document does not specify what officials should do if the second set also fails.

Rare Survival Raises Unprecedented Questions

Executions that deviate from established procedures are sometimes described as “botched” executions, but experts say it is exceptionally rare for a prisoner to survive a lethal injection after the drugs have been administered.

Austin Sarat, an Amherst College professor who has written extensively about the death penalty and lethal injection, said there was very little precedent for what happened to Pike.

He pointed to the case of Willie Francis, who survived an electric-chair execution in Louisiana about 80 years ago before being executed during a second attempt.

Sarat described Pike's case as largely unprecedented because she survived an execution in which the drugs had reached her.

The incident has also renewed scrutiny of lethal injection more broadly. Corinna Barrett Lain, a University of Richmond School of Law professor and author of Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection, said the method combines elements requiring medical precision with an execution system that does not operate as a conventional medical procedure.

Multiple US states have faced problems with lethal injection in recent years, while some have adopted or revived alternative execution methods, including nitrogen gas and firing squads.

For Pike, however, the immediate question is her condition and what happens to her death sentence after the failed execution. Her lawyers are seeking commutation, while the state-ordered review is expected to examine the circumstances surrounding Wednesday night's attempt.