As Christa Gail Pike’s execution approaches, renewed attention is being placed on the method Tennessee plans to use, with one expert warning that lethal injection carries serious risks.
Pike was convicted over the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors said she lured Slemmer to a secluded location, where the teenager was beaten to death.
At the time of the killing, Pike was 18. The case centered on Pike’s belief that Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend.
A year later, Pike was found guilty and sentenced to death. She is also serving time for the attempted murder of another inmate in 2004.
After spending decades on death row, her execution is now scheduled for September 30, 2026.
If it goes ahead, Pike will become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years and the only person executed in the state for a crime committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era.
The state intends to carry out the sentence by lethal injection, a process Matt Wells, Deputy Director of Reprieve US, argues has a troubling history of failures.
Discussing those concerns, Wells said:
“Two months ago, Tony Carruthers was strapped to a gurney for over an hour while prison staff stabbed him with needles more than a dozen times as they failed to establish an IV line.”
That execution attempt in May was ultimately stopped after officials were unable to access a vein. Governor Bill Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve. Critics described the episode as barbaric, saying Carruthers was left in severe pain for more than an hour.
Wells added:
“This is not an isolated incident,” Wells went on. “Our research showed that more than a quarter of botched lethal injections in the modern era lasted over an hour.
“The fact that Tennessee is doubling down on this broken execution method, so soon after torturing a man in the chamber, is beyond belief. There is a high risk that Christa Pike could suffer a prolonged and agonizing death.”
He also claimed that states across the US work hard to keep details about executions out of public view, which he says helps preserve the perception that lethal injection is humane.
“The reality is there is no such thing,” he insisted.
Wells is not the only person raising concerns ahead of the execution. In a press release, Pike’s attorney Stephen Ferrell said:
“We are particularly concerned given Christa Pike’s blood condition thrombocytopenia, which leads to excessive bleeding, as well as her small veins which make the insertion of a needle difficult, even for the most trained medical professionals.”
Ferrell also said:
“The difficulty establishing IV lines is a known complication that has caused prolonged and botched executions for year,” Ferrell added.
Pike’s legal team has challenged the state’s revised lethal injection protocol on constitutional grounds. In their filings, they warned that due to her medical conditions, the drug pentobarbital would produce “bloody froth” in her lungs, and the process would be akin to “death by drowning in one’s own blood.”
Her legal team has asked for a special master to be assigned to the case to review whether carrying out the execution would be constitutional.
Pike, whose lawyers say she has a history of abuse by men, is scheduled to be executed by an all-male team.
Shelby County Senior Judge Mark Ward has been appointed as special master and is expected to consider, among other issues, whether the execution method would expose Pike to excessive pain.
Tennessee’s current execution protocol relies solely on pentobarbital, a shift from the three-drug cocktail previously used. The state halted executions in 2022 after an investigation revealed prison officials were breaking their own lethal injection rules regarding drug handling. Executions resumed in 2025.