Christina Pike, first Tennessee woman set for execution in 200 years, survives 2 lethal injections

Tennessee officials were unable to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday after administering two doses of the lethal injection drug, in what a death penalty expert described as an unprecedented failure. Pike remained alive after the attempted execution and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, her attorneys said.Pike, 50, had been scheduled to be executed at 10 am (local time) for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she killed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.Pike’s attorneys said she was alive and loudly snoring after the second dose of pentobarbital. They filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to halt the execution, arguing that she was in “unnecessary agony” and that the attempt violated her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment.Tennessee Gov Bill Lee ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and said the remaining execution scheduled for this year would not take place.“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said.The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”The state’s protocol provides for a second set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set, but does not specify what should happen if the person remains alive after the second dose.Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.” She said seven other people have survived medical problems during executions because teams were unable to access a vein for lethal injection, but no one had remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions.Media witnesses said the execution chamber curtains were raised at 7.27 pm (local time), showing Pike strapped to a gurney. During her final statement, she said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” and described herself as at peace.Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not immediately clear what she was referring to. By 8.26 pm (local time), witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8.53 pm (locsl time), after which media witnesses were escorted from the area.The failed execution was the second time this year that Tennessee was unable to carry out a lethal injection. In May, state officials halted the execution of Tony Carruthers after executioners spent more than an hour trying and failing to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.The failed execution came after a legal battle over whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been fully considered at sentencing. The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a stay shortly before the scheduled execution, but the US Supreme Court later cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The court’s conservative majority did not explain its order, while its three liberal members dissented.Pike did not deny killing Slemmer, but her supporters argued that her age at the time of the crime, mental illness and allegations of severe sexual abuse should be considered. After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted in the fatal stabbing and beating of Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville, on January 12, 1995. Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area because she feared Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend.Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, admitted to carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s body. He received a life sentence with the possibility of parole, while Pike was sentenced to death.Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had travelled to Nashville hoping to witness the execution after waiting decades for Pike’s sentence to be carried out.“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the US, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug lethal injection protocol to the single drug pentobarbital. The change came more than two years after the state halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that its lethal injection drugs had not been properly tested.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.