Attorneys for Christa Pike say she is in critical condition and receiving “life-saving care” after Tennessee tried and failed twice Wednesday to put the convicted murderer to death.
Pike’s lawyers spoke at a virtual press conference hours after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted another planned execution while an independent party audits the state’s execution method. In May, the state called off another inmate’s execution after prison staff could not insert an IV into his arm.
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Pike, 50, survived two presumptively fatal doses of pentobarbital, administered more than an hour apart. Randy Spivey, one of Pike’s lawyers, called the botched execution “cruel and torturous.”
Spivey asked the governor to commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison. She was convicted in 1996, along with two co-defendants, of torturing and murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer.
In announcing the moratorium on executions, Lee described the episode as “a tragedy.”
“There is no one who wanted last night to happen,” he said Thursday.
After the second lethal injection failed, prison officials called an ambulance that transported Pike to a hospital where she began receiving care. Pike’s attorneys didn’t say if she was conscious when she was taken to the hospital or if she is currently conscious.
Witnesses said the execution was clearly abnormal and that Pike appeared to be awake during it. Catherine Sweeney, a reporter from Nashville public radio station WPLN who was among the media witnesses, said that even after two doses of the lethal drug, Pike was still breathing.
“It was very ragged,” Sweeney said. “She lifted her head up and was looking around at one point. She said that there was a spot that was burning and hurting and asked if that was normal. None of it was normal. I covered all the executions last year and most of the ones this year. We haven’t seen anything like it.”
What happened?
Spivey said at Thursday’s press conference that the execution team spent about an hour placing the IV lines and that he “counted at least seven needles used in her left arm alone.” He said Pike tried to help, telling prison officials to try veins higher up her arm, near her shoulder.
After the second dose, with the chamber curtains closed and Pike’s spiritual adviser removed, Spivey said he asked to contact the rest of Pike’s legal team. He said it took about seven minutes and passage through six locked doors to reach a phone.
“Between 8:25 and essentially 8:50, when we were finally told that the ambulance was on its way, I have no idea what happened in that room,” Spivey said.
Stephen Ferrell, an attorney with Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee who also represents Pike, said he believes the IV may have failed and that the drugs were “ending up in her arm” instead of her bloodstream. But he said there are “a number of factors that could be involved” and that he hopes records are preserved so his team can determine the cause.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement after the failed execution that “the lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective” and that the state’s execution protocol “does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening.”
‘Predictable’
Spivey said the failed execution was “predictable.” In a June court filing, Pike’s lawyers warned that her blood disorder and small veins would make IV access difficult and that she would likely “require multiple doses.” A court-appointed special master rejected those claims.
Ferrell was also skeptical of Lee’s call for an independent review, pointing to what happened the last time the state paused executions. In 2022, Lee halted the execution of Oscar Smith less than 30 minutes before prison staff was expected to carry it out. He then paused executions and ordered an independent review after it emerged that the state hadn’t tested its lethal injection drugs for endotoxins, toxic bacterial byproducts. The review found TDOC had never given its execution protocol to the pharmacy that tested the drugs and that the department lacked “adequate expertise, guidance, and counsel.”
Ferrell said that review produced “a less detailed protocol and more secrecy.”
The state isn’t required to seek a new execution date for Pike, Ferrell said, and her appeal remains pending before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Lethal injection’s troubled record
In 1977, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injection as a more humane alternative to the electric chair. Texas carried out the first lethal injection execution in 1982, when it executed Charles Brooks Jr.
But research by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat found that from 1890 to 2010, lethal injection had the highest botch rate of any execution method, about 7%, compared with roughly 3% for all executions.
Even some death penalty supporters oppose the method. Robert Blecker, a professor emeritus at New York Law School who supports capital punishment for the worst crimes, said he objects to it for a different reason than its critics.
“I’ve long opposed lethal injection as a means of execution, not because it might cause pain but because it certainly causes confusion,” he told Straight Arrow. “It medicalizes punishment.”
Critics point to several reasons the method fails. Medical ethics rules bar doctors from participating, so people without medical training often place the IV lines. Secrecy laws keep information like drug sources and execution team qualifications from the public, which critics say makes problems harder to catch.
Tennessee has struggled with the method recently. In May, the state called off Tony Carruthers’ execution after the team couldn’t establish a backup IV line, according to Pike’s June filing. The filing also cited autopsies of Byron Black and Harold Nichols, executed in 2025, that showed pulmonary edema, a buildup of fluid in the lungs. A 2020 NPR investigation found signs of pulmonary edema in 84% of more than 200 lethal injection autopsies it reviewed.
Where executions are headed
As scrutiny of lethal injection grows, some states are turning to other methods. In Tennessee, Ferrell said, “the electric chair is an option on the books at this time.”
Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner with nitrogen gas when it executed Kenneth Smith in 2024, and it has since used the method six more times, most recently in October 2025 with Anthony Boyd. A media witness reported Boyd gasping for air more than 225 times.
South Carolina returned to the firing squad last year, executing Brad Sigmon in March 2025. Idaho has since made it the state’s primary method. Blecker argued the firing squad is a more “forthright” method and that even some death penalty opponents consider it more reliable than lethal injection.
But the method isn’t foolproof. An autopsy of Mikal Mahdi, the second person South Carolina executed by firing squad, showed only two wounds instead of three, and his lawyers said the shooters largely missed his heart.
For Pike, what comes next is uncertain. Her lawyers said they haven’t been able to see her and don’t know the extent of her injuries. Ferrell said Pike’s biggest fear wasn’t dying.
“It was a fear of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death,” he said, “and that’s what happened minus the death.”
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