Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is still alive following a failed execution attempt by state officials, her defense attorney confirmed Thursday.
The state attempted to execute Pike by lethal injection on Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. However, neither the initial dose nor the backup dose of pentobarbital killed her, and she was still snoring when the execution chamber’s microphone was cut off more than an hour into the procedure.
Pike was then transferred to an off-site hospital for medical treatment.
“Christa is alive right now,” defense attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment. But we know she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care.”
Spivey told reporters that the failed execution attempt amounted to “torture” and called for her death sentence to be commuted to life in prison.
He added that he was “haunted” by the scene, describing how the execution team struggled to access a vein in her left arm and used at least seven needles. Defense counsel Steve Ferrell explained that Pike had a lifelong blood disorder that made drawing blood difficult, raising concerns that the lethal drugs leaked into her arm muscle rather than properly entering her bloodstream.
Witnesses inside the chamber reported that Pike remained conscious during the initial attempt and asked prison staff if her arm was supposed to feel that way. She even tried to assist executioners by pointing out where to insert the IV, saying, “Please try here, please try here... please try higher on my shoulder,” according to Spivey.
The victim’s mother, May Martinez, who attended the execution in Nashville, told NBC News that “it was a mess.”
Following the incident, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee indefinitely postponed Pike’s execution along with the state’s only remaining execution scheduled for this year. Lee called the event “deeply disturbing” and ordered a full review into what went wrong.
The Tennessee Department of Correction stated that it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol,” which uses a single-drug dose of pentobarbital — a method adopted by the state in 2024.
The botched procedure marks the second time this year Tennessee failed to complete an execution after previously calling off a lethal injection in May due to vein access issues, as reported by the Associated Press. Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the publication that while others have survived attempted executions due to IV placement failures, no inmate in U.S. history has ever survived after the lethal drugs were fully administered.
An appeals court had initially issued a stay of execution an hour before the procedure was scheduled to start, but the decision was overturned hours later by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When strapped to the gurney and asked for her final words, Pike said she was at peace, stating, “I’m ready to be free... This is a happy day.”
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, a crime committed when Pike was 18 years old. Pike never denied her role in the killing, though supporters pointed to her age, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and history of severe childhood abuse in appeals for clemency.
Had the lethal injection been completed, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
