Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike on Wednesday, and the lethal injection did not work. Officials administered two doses of pentobarbital, but Pike was still alive afterward, reportedly snoring on the gurney, and was taken to a hospital instead. It marked the second failed execution in the state this year, following Tony Carruthers in May. Gov. Bill Lee has since ordered an independent review and suspended all executions through the end of 2026.
Pike, now 50, was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a crime committed when Pike was 18. She would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. The victim’s mother, May Martinez, has waited three decades for the sentence to be carried out. Pike’s scheduled 10 a.m. execution was delayed by a stay, which the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned, before the procedure itself ultimately failed. Before the attempt, Pike said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love.”
The failed injection raises hard questions about execution protocols, the death penalty for offenders who were 18 at the time of their crimes, and what happens when the state cannot carry out a sentence it fought for in court. Gov. Lee called carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence “among the State’s most serious responsibilities,” and that responsibility is now under third-party scrutiny.
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