Christa Pike, 50, is unconscious and on a ventilator after Tennessee officials failed to execute her by lethal injection.
Pike remains in critical condition at a hospital as of Thursday night, her legal team confirmed. The botched procedure has drawn fresh attention to her violent past behind bars, including a second murder attempt and a foiled escape plot that have largely faded from public memory.
While held at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, Pike attacked fellow prisoner Patricia Jones. She tried to strangle Jones using a shoestring, and was later convicted of attempted first-degree murder in 2004.
Years after that attack, two men were arrested over a plot to help Pike break out of prison. Former prison guard Justin Heflin was indicted for his part, and Pike’s then-boyfriend Donald Kohut was also charged.
The current crisis traces back to executioners struggling for hours to establish an IV line. Pike’s lawyers say her arms are burned, blistered and swollen, claiming she was struck with at least seven needles. They had raised concerns months earlier that her small veins and a blood condition could make IV insertion harder.
Joel Zivot, a medical adviser to Pike’s legal team, said that some inmates become too ill to be put to death. If her health can never be restored to the point where another execution is conceivable, he said, she might not face one. If she recovers sufficiently, though, a second attempt could still be possible.
Pike was sentenced to die in 1996 for the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors said she carried out the attack with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, after Pike claimed Slemmer was trying to take him from her. Slemmer’s body had been beaten and carved with satanic pentagrams. Pike has never denied her role, but has described herself as “a mentally ill 18-year-old kid” at the time.
Her lawyers had fought to stop the execution, arguing her crime couldn’t be separated from a traumatic childhood. A clemency petition pointed to evidence her mother drank heavily while pregnant, which they say affected Pike’s brain development and impulse control. It also documented childhood violence, neglect and sexual abuse.
“With time and treatment, Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime,” her lawyers said.
Had the execution been completed, Pike would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee in over 200 years. Instead, the procedure’s failure has thrown the state’s capital punishment system into turmoil.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee paused the remaining executions scheduled for 2026 and called for a review of the state’s execution procedures. It remains unclear whether the state will attempt to execute Pike again.
Pike’s survival marks another grim chapter in a case that has spanned nearly three decades from a brutal campus killing to a medical crisis on the gurney.
Pike is receiving life-saving medical care as her legal team pushes to commute her execution.