A planned execution in Tennessee ended without a death after Christa Gail Pike remained alive despite being given two doses of the drug used for lethal injections, prompting the state to stop all executions scheduled for the rest of the year.
Pike, 50, was due to be put to death on Wednesday for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, but the procedure failed and she was taken from prison by ambulance for medical care.
The development prompted Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to order an independent investigation into the execution attempt and suspend all other executions planned for 2026.
Lee said he had ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that no scheduled executions would be conducted this year.
“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,” he said.
The state has only one other execution on its calendar for this year.
Pike had been scheduled to receive the lethal injection at 10 a.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If carried out, it would have made her the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries.
The execution was delayed shortly before it was due to begin when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to grant a stay.
The appeals court said it needed more time to consider claims that Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse had not received proper consideration when she was sentenced.
The Tennessee attorney general’s office challenged the stay before the US Supreme Court, arguing that the last-minute intervention had caused trauma to Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.
The Supreme Court later cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed. The court’s conservative majority gave no explanation for its decision, while three liberal justices dissented and said Pike’s claims warranted further consideration.
Once the execution resumed, prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital, according to court filings submitted by Pike’s lawyers.
Media witnesses were allowed to observe the execution from a separate room. At 7:27 p.m., curtains were opened and Pike was seen secured to a gurney.
“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” Pike said during what were expected to be her final words.
She also said she was at peace.
However, Pike did not lose consciousness as expected. Witnesses said she remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was unclear what she was referring to.
At 8:26 p.m., witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been given.
Pike could still be heard snoring behind the curtain until the microphone was switched off at 8:53 p.m. Media witnesses were then told to leave.
Her lawyers subsequently filed an emergency application with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to stop the execution, arguing that she was suffering “unnecessary agony” and that the procedure violated her constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
Additional motions were filed in the 6th Circuit and federal district court.
The Tennessee Department of Correction defended the procedure, saying prison officials had followed the state's approved process.
The department said in a statement that they “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
Tennessee’s execution rules provide for a second set of syringes to be used “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set is administered. However, the rules do not state what officials should do when an inmate remains alive after receiving the second set.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Pike’s case was “singular and unparalleled.”
Maher said seven other inmates have survived execution-related medical problems after teams failed to gain access to a vein for the lethal drugs. She said, however, that no one had remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions.
The failed procedure marked the second time Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution this year.
In May, officials abandoned the planned execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994. Execution workers spent more than an hour attempting to insert an IV for the administration of pentobarbital before the procedure was called off.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted over Slemmer’s killing in 1995. The three were classmates at a job training facility in Knoxville.
Prosecutors said Pike feared that Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend and lured her into a wooded area on January 12, 1995. Pike attacked Slemmer with a box cutter before striking her with a large piece of asphalt.
Pike’s boyfriend, Shipp, has admitted that he carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into Slemmer’s body.
The details of the killing attracted widespread attention and contributed to fears about Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Shipp was 17 when the killing occurred and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Pike, who was 18, was the only person given a death sentence.
Pike did not deny killing Slemmer, but her supporters argued that her age, mental illness and claims of serious sexual abuse should have been considered in deciding her punishment.
She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In her clemency petition, Pike said she had intended to fight Slemmer but lost control during what became a deadly attack.
“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.
The case also renewed debate over whether people who commit serious crimes at 18 should receive the death penalty.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s sentence was an outlier because other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee had later had their death sentences overturned.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had travelled to the prison hoping the execution would go ahead. She has said she has waited for decades to see Pike’s sentence 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 by telephone on Saturday.
Martinez also said Pike’s age at the time of the crime should be taken into account.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen,” she said, adding that her daughter would have turned 51 in September.
Tennessee announced in 2024 that it would replace its three-drug lethal injection method with pentobarbital as a single drug.
The change followed the state’s decision more than two years earlier to stop the execution of Oscar Smith after officials acknowledged that they had not properly tested the drugs intended for his lethal injection.
Since the US Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the United States, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the US this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.