Carrie Ross says her family felt a surge of hope when they learned Christa Pike had survived the executioner’s needle.
Ross, Pike’s aunt, said that relatives were watching and waiting as the state of Tennessee tried to carry out the 50-year-old’s death sentence on Sept. 30. The execution, which would have made Pike the first woman put to death in the state in more than two centuries, took an unexpected turn after two lethal injections failed to kill her.
“When they said she’s still breathing, we got excited thinking that she was going to make it,” Ross said in her interview with the outlet.
That hope proved short-lived. Pike was rushed to a hospital following the botched procedure, but the state has signaled its intention to try again.
Ross revealed that Pike herself had not wanted the eleventh-hour legal reprieve that briefly delayed the execution. A stay from the Court of Appeals came down with just an hour to spare before the scheduled 10 a.m. Start time, only to be lifted later that evening by the US Supreme Court.
“She didn’t want the stay,” Ross said. “She was ready to go. She was at peace. She had accepted that whatever happened was not in her control. It was in God’s control.”
The case that put Pike on death row stretches back to January 1995, when she was 18. She was convicted of the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate at a Job Corps program. Prosecutors described the killing as sadistic, and the brutality of the crime has kept Pike on Tennessee’s death row for nearly three decades.
The failed execution has drawn renewed attention to the state’s lethal injection protocols and the rarity of executing women in the United States. Only a handful of women have been put to death since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and Tennessee had not executed a woman in over 200 years.
Pike’s family has now broken its silence about the ordeal, with Ross emerging as the first relative to speak publicly about what they witnessed and felt during the hours-long process. Her account offers a rare window into the perspective of a death row inmate’s loved ones during an execution attempt.
The aunt’s description of Pike’s mindset — accepting, resigned, even eager for the process to end — contrasts sharply with the legal battles that have surrounded the case. Defense attorneys had fought the execution up to the nation’s highest court, even as Pike herself, according to her family, had made peace with her fate.
Pike’s condition following the botched procedure and her transfer to a hospital has not been fully detailed in public statements from prison officials. Her lawyers have described the execution attempt as “torturous,” according to reports.
The state has not announced a new execution date.