Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended every execution still on the calendar this year and ordered an outside investigation after death row inmate Christa Pike survived two lethal injections.
Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries when officials strapped her to a gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville last Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court had overturned a reprieve granted just one hour before the scheduled start, clearing the way for the procedure to begin at 7:27 p.m. Local time.
Moments before the first syringe, Pike spoke her final words to those witnessing the execution.
“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” she said.
The pentobarbital did not kill her. By 8:26 p.m., a second dose had been pushed into her veins. Witnesses told reporters she gasped, complained of pain, and kicked so violently that she knocked her sheets loose. Her lawyers later said she never lost consciousness, still had a heartbeat, and was “audibly snoring” as the curtains dropped twice during the attempt. The microphone inside the chamber was shut off at 8:53 p.m.
Her legal team filed an emergency motion to halt the proceedings, stating they had “not been informed as to her condition” as the night stretched on. The Tennessee Department of Correction countered that it had followed “every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office” and that the lethal injection chemical “has consistently been effective.” A spokesperson added that the protocol does not permit any additional procedures beyond what was already carried out.
Pike was transported from the prison to an off-site medical facility, where she received life-saving care.
The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks flaws in capital punishment application, called the episode “one of the worst botched executions in the modern death penalty era.”
“This debacle was entirely preventable,” the organization said.
Executive director Robin Maher noted that while seven other people have survived medical complications when execution teams failed to access a vein, no one had previously remained alive after actually receiving the drugs meant to stop their heart. She described Pike’s case as “singular and unparalleled.”
May Martinez, mother of Pike’s victim, had driven to Nashville expecting to watch the execution. She spoke by phone with NBC News afterward.
“They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die,” Martinez said.
Martinez said Pike never expressed remorse during the attempt, offering nothing “about what happened, you know, to Colleen.”
Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp were convicted of torturing and killing Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate at a Knoxville job training facility, in 1995. Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area because she believed the teenager was trying to steal Shipp. A pentagram was carved on Slemmer’s body, fueling satanic panic fears that dominated national media during the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with parole eligibility. A judge sentenced Pike to death in 1996. She does not deny the killing, but supporters have argued her age at the time, mental illness, and history of severe sexual abuse should have been weighed more heavily.
The failed execution comes months after another Tennessee death row inmate, Tony Carruthers, saw his May execution called off when officials could not locate a suitable vein. Carruthers was convicted of killing three people in 1994.
Pike remains the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. The last woman executed in the state died in 1820, according to historical records.
Governor Lee’s suspension of remaining 2025 executions and his call for a “comprehensive, third party review to determine exactly what occurred” leaves the status of Tennessee’s capital punishment protocol in question as state officials face scrutiny over how two full doses of lethal drugs failed to complete the procedure.