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A convicted murderer Christina Pike still alive after the State of Tennessee’s attempt to execute her. Pike received two lethal injections after a brief stay of execution on Wednesday, September 30, but the state’s execution was later stayed.
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Christa Pike survived two fatal injections during an attempted execution
The State of Tennessee failed to execute Christa Pike at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday. Pike was still breathing after being given two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, according to The Tennessean.
The drug was given to the 50-year-old man during an attempted execution at the facility in Nashville, according to NBC News. Pentobarbital is used for lethal injection because of its effect on the central nervous system, which stops breathing and incapacitates at high doses. The National Library of Medicine states that two to ten grams of pentobarbital is fatal within 15 to 30 minutes.
Pike received a second dose about 30 minutes after the first injection, at about 8:00 p.m. The execution was halted about an hour early while the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed claims that Pike was sexually abused as a child. However, the Supreme Court did not stop his execution, and the state went ahead. The Death Penalty Information Center shared a statement following an attempted execution by lawyers Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason. The attorneys previously noted at a hearing in August that Pike had been diagnosed with a vein condition called thrombocytosis, according to PBS. After that, they argued that finding a vein would be challenging.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to execute a lawful execution,” the statement reads. “We don’t like to be right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike were real: difficult vein access, blown veins, contaminated pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things go wrong, all under a protocol that remains shrouded in secrecy.”
WKRN reporter in Nashville, Tori Gessnerhe witnessed the execution attempt and said Pike said her arm felt like it would “explode.”
“My arm feels like it’s going to split open,” Pike said to Gessner. “Will this happen like that?”
Other witnesses said they could hear Pike breathing and snoring after receiving the fatal injection of pentobarbital. “Nothing about today was ordinary, normal, at all,” said Gessner.
Robin Maher of the Death Penalty Information Center to The New York Times:
“This incident is the worst we have seen and unlike any other botched performance in modern times.”
Tennessee Department of Corrections Case Report
The Tennessee Department of Corrections issued a statement claiming that the State’s execution protocols have been followed and have “been consistently effective.”
“The Tennessee Department of Corrections followed all steps of the State’s valid, established law enforcement protocol approved by the Office of the Attorney General,” read the statement. “The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has been consistently effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was done tonight. Christa Pike was transported to an off-site medical facility.”
Tennessee also mocked execution Tony Carruthers earlier this year when they couldn’t find a vein for the IV. According to WSFB, the same doctor, Dr. Mark Fowler, was in charge of both Pike’s and Carruthers’ failures.
Why is Pike on death row?
According to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, Pike is the only woman on death row in the state. She was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1995 death Colleen Slemmer. Slemmer was a classmate of Pike’s in the Jobs Corps education program in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Pike and two teenage accomplices, Tadaryl Shipp and Shadola Peterson, allegedly beat, stabbed and tortured Slemmer at the University of Tennessee Agriculture campus. The teenagers also drew a pentagram into Slemmer’s face and chest with a box cutter, according to ABC4 News. In addition, the killers took a fragment of the 19-year-old’s skull as a “souvenir”.
Colleen Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, said of the execution to NBC News:
“They went to try to put her to death, and she didn’t die… It was a mess,” she said. “They didn’t say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave. And we left…. We didn’t know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner, and he said it didn’t work…. and she’s on her way to the hospital…
She also told the service that Pike never showed any remorse for killing her daughter.
“Nothing…about what happened, you know, Colleen,” Martinez added.
Shipp was 17 at the time and is serving life, while Peterson, who was a patrolman at the time of the murder, served a year in prison, according to Clarion.com.
Pike recently said of the offense:
“I was an 18-year-old with a mental illness. It took me several years to even realize the severity of what I had done.”
What happens next after Botched Execution?
Republican Gov. Bill Lee He said the last execution scheduled in Tennessee will be halted for 2026 when he ordered a “third-party review” to determine what happened during the execution attempt.
“Tennesseans deserve a justice system that is fair, that is consistent, that is faithfully administered,” he said. “My responsibility is to uphold the sentences handed down by Tennessee juries, even when it’s difficult, and that’s exactly what we plan to do in the coming days.”
The governor also called the event “very upset.”
Pike was taken to the hospital after the attempted execution, but is reported to be in critical condition, according to WKRN. Another lawyer for Pike, Steve Farrellsaid:
“We will never know what physical pain and what mental pain she was going through, but that was her biggest fear as a survivor of sexual abuse, that she would be pinned down, crushed, kissed, cut for a long time and during that time she could be reliving her past trauma,” he said. “For a traumatized person to be put through this, no one should have to do that. It was cruel and unusual punishment.”
Spivey provided an update on Pike’s condition at a news conference on Thursday, October 1, in The Associated Press. However, the details were scarce.
“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much of an update on her health at this time,” Spivey said. “But we know she’s alive now.”
Before attempting to execute him, Pike said:
“I’m not afraid to die…. I’m just nervous about the process.”
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