Christa Pike, a 50-year-old death row inmate in Tennessee, is conscious and communicating in a limited way in her hospital room, roughly a week after the state failed to execute her by lethal injection, according to her lawyers.
Pike survived two attempts to put her to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, whom she met at a summer camp for troubled teenagers. Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review of what went wrong in the Nashville execution chamber on 30 September, and has suspended executions in the state until the end of the year.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has not explained why the execution did not go as planned, though it has defended the method it used. Dr Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike’s defence team, said her survival was not the result of any “special immunity”, telling the BBC it appeared that too little of the drug pentobarbital reached her bloodstream to kill her.
Under the prison authorities’ protocol, Pike was given a second dose after the first failed to end her life. In BBC interviews, Zivot suggested the pentobarbital was more likely to have dispersed through the tissue beneath her skin than to have entered her blood. “Most of the pentobarbital, instead of circulating in her body, ended up in her arms, and that’s how she lived,” he said.
Pike’s legal team had flagged her thrombocytosis, a blood-clotting condition, as a further factor that could derail the process, and had filed a case before the attempted execution challenging the injection protocol. Clots forming at the injection site as a result of the condition could have blocked the chemical from entering her veins, the lawyers warned.
During the attempt, prison officials used at least seven needles to establish intravenous lines, her lawyers said afterwards. Pike could simultaneously be heard “crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly”.
May Martinez, the mother of Colleen Slemmer, told NBC the failed execution had been “a mess”.
The correction department defended its method, saying “the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out”. According to the AP news agency, the state protocol does not clearly state what should happen if an inmate remains alive after a second dose. Once it became clear the two doses would not kill Pike, she was taken to hospital for life-saving treatment. States are legally obliged not to deny medical treatment to prisoners.
Pentobarbital is a potent sedative that slows the body, including the nervous system. Doctors sometimes use it to treat certain conditions, but in high doses it can be used as a lethal injection to cause death. Its use in executions drew renewed scrutiny last year when a US federal government review during the Biden administration raised concerns about the drug’s potential for “unnecessary pain and suffering”. The Biden government banned its use in federal executions, but that did not bind individual states such as Tennessee, which can choose their own methods.
In recent years, states have found some drugs needed for lethal injections harder to come by, because pharmaceutical companies have opposed the use of their products for such purposes. The department has not specifically addressed an allegation from Pike’s legal team that the pentobarbital it used was “degraded”, but it said the lethal injection chemical had “consistently been effective”.
The full picture of Pike’s current physical condition is unknown. She was said to be awake and speaking in hospital as of 6 October, and walking short distances around her room as of the next day, but it remains unclear whether she has any long-term health defects. At one stage her lawyers reported that she was still handcuffed to her bed.
What happens to Pike next is unresolved. Executions in the state have been paused for the rest of the year, and during a court hearing on 7 October a lawyer for Tennessee said the decision on scheduling a new execution date was up to the state’s supreme court. An investigation into what happened is taking place, and during the hearing a judge ordered state authorities to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution. The state’s Department of Correction Commissioner, Frank Strada, is stepping down.
Pike’s lawyers have repeatedly called on Lee to use his powers as state governor to commute her sentence to life in prison without parole. John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death, said the US Supreme Court has historically not halted second attempts at executions. In 2024, it allowed Alabama to proceed with a second execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, using an experimental oxygen deprivation method, after the plan to kill him by lethal injection failed two years earlier. The Supreme Court has already been involved in Pike’s case: it allowed the lethal injections to go ahead after a legal battle.
While there is a lengthy history of botched executions across the US, Pike is believed to be the only person to have survived after receiving a lethal injection. Deborah Denno, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, told the BBC she was “absolutely astonished” that Pike is conscious and speaking. There had been seven previous cases in which prisoners survived executions, but in those cases executioners were unable to inject anything into the inmates’ veins, Denno said. Pike “is the only person for whom some kind of toxin has been injected”, she said.
The attempted execution of Pike was not the first in Tennessee in 2026 that did not go to plan. The execution of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed in May after staff were unable to find a vein for a lethal injection. He was granted a year’s reprieve by the governor.
In 2022, more than a third of executions across the US were botched or highly problematic, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take an ethical stance on the penalty.
Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder a year earlier of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, which was perpetrated along with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Pike killed Slemmer at a camp for troubled teens, after accusing her of insulting her and attempting to steal Shipp from her. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder and showed them a piece of Slemmer’s skull. An inverted pentagram, associated with satanic groups, was carved into Slemmer’s chest during the murder. Pike has denied carving the symbol herself.
Shipp was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole and remains in prison. He was spared the death penalty for his part in the attack because he was not yet legally an adult at the time.
Correction 7 October: an earlier version of this article referred to second attempts at execution in the US, including a case in which an inmate executed in Louisiana was incorrectly named as Willie Smith instead of Willie Francis. This was corrected on 1 October, but the text was later removed as the story was updated with new information about the Pike case.
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