Christa Pike’s attorneys say the condemned inmate survived two lethal injection doses after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared her execution to proceed.
Pike, 50, remained alive and breathing inside the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville after executioners pushed two syringes of the state’s lethal chemical mixture through her intravenous lines, her legal team disclosed. The drugs failed to cause cardiac arrest despite being fully administered by the state’s execution team.
“She’s alive and snoring,” her attorney Kelly Gleason said, confirming that the condemned woman had not succumbed to the initial doses. Gleason added that fellow defense counsel Randy Spivey witnessed the procedure inside the execution chamber before stepping out to raise the alarm about Pike’s condition.
The botched attempt triggered an emergency response from Pike’s legal team. Attorney Amy Harwell was reportedly driving an emergency motion directly to the Tennessee Supreme Court, demanding that the state cease all execution protocols immediately.
“She needs immediate medical care,” Gleason stressed. The attorney argued that the failed execution creates an unconstitutional scenario of cruel and unusual punishment and leaves Pike in critical physical jeopardy inside the prison.
The harrowing development unfolded just hours after the nation’s highest court dissolved an eleventh-hour stay granted by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That temporary halt had briefly blocked Tennessee from proceeding before the midnight expiration of Pike’s death warrant.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. She had been poised to become the first woman put to death by the state of Tennessee in more than two centuries.
The Tennessee Department of Correction had not issued an official statement regarding the status of the IV lines, the specific chemical compounds delivered, or whether the execution protocol had been formally aborted for the night.
The case stems from a 1995 killing on the University of Tennessee agricultural campus in Knoxville, where Pike and a male accomplice lured Slemmer to a remote spot under the pretense of resolving a dispute. Prosecutors said Pike, then 18, struck Slemmer repeatedly with a piece of asphalt and later carved a pentagram into her chest. A piece of asphalt with Pike’s fingerprints was found near the body, and she reportedly showed the crime scene to friends. She received a death sentence the following year.
The emergency filings came as Pike’s legal team raced against the clock of her expiring death warrant, with defense attorneys arguing that the botched procedure demanded immediate judicial intervention to prevent further harm to their client.
The Tennessee Supreme Court had not ruled on the new emergency motion as of the initial reports.