Tennessee governor halts executions after Christa Gail Pike survives
lethal injection attempt
[October 01, 2026]
By KIM CHANDLER and KRISTIN M. HALL
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa
Gail Pike to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two
doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an
unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted the one
remaining execution for the rest of the year.
Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal
injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said.
She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told
about her condition.
She had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the
killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman
executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped
the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later
the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.
Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in
court filings late Wednesday.
Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive,
third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that the
remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most
serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be
done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is
effective,” he said.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it
“followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution
protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
The state's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug
syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the
first set. It does not spell out 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 unparalleled.”
Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution
team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs,
but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such
executions, she said.
Media witnesses detail the execution process
Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised
curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to
a gurney.
“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that
is in love,” she said in her “last” words. She described herself as at
peace.
But Pike remained 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 referencing.
By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of
pentobarbital had been administered.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the
microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an
announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the
Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the
execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating
her right to be executed free of 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 has been unable to carry
out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection
of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three
people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to
place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating
in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job
training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention
in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and
other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the
“satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
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This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows
Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)
Stay of execution was swiftly 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 Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to
issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether
Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered
at her sentencing.
The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying
that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s
family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution
to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order,
while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s
claims deserved a closer look.
Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued
that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental
illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.
Case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens
As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death
penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death
sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have
had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and
post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said
she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack
when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to
even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a
statement.
Victim's mother says she is waiting for death sentence
Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the 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 on Saturday.
Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment
after the execution was halted.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike,
fearing Slemmer was trying to steal 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 chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has
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 happened and received a sentence of life
in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one
sentenced to death.
Executions of women are rare in the US
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18
women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all
executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. 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. That
came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the
execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to
ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.
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