Christa Pike survives execution attempt in Tennessee as governor halts executions this year
Christa Pike, 50, was set to be executed Wednesday morning in Tennessee for the 1995 murder of a classmate. (Photo: TN Department of Correction)
Christa Pike survived Tennessee's effort to execute her by means of lethal injection late on Wednesday, prison officials said, foiling the state's first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries.
The 50-year-old was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys told The Associated Press.
Pike was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.
Pike's execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday for the 1995 murder she committed at 18 years old, and she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years.
According to the AP, an appeals court stopped the lethal injection an hour before it was to start and hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.
Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her lawyers stated in court filings late Wednesday.
The AP noted that is was the second time in 2026 that Tennessee was unable to perform an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, after executioners attempted and failed for more than an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Tennessee governor's statement on Christa Pike
What they're saying:
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who denied Christa Pike's clemency petition on Monday, said in a statement, obtained by The Associated Press, that he has ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred" and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place 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," Lee said.
In a statement from the Tennessee Department of Correction also obtained by the AP, the agency said that it "followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office."
Tennessee's execution protocol calls for a second set of drug syringes to be administered "if the inmate is not deceased" after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
Media witnesses detail the execution process
Dig deeper:
The Associated Press reported that media witnesses watching from a separate room stated officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m. on Wednesday, showing Pike strapped 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 in her "last" words. She described herself as at peace.
However, Pike was still awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.
By 8:26 p.m., execution 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 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Christa Pike murder case
The backstory:
Christa Pike was set to be executed after she and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.
Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt.
Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 years old when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
The case gained widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.
In a 226-page petition, obtained by Reuters, asking the governor to commute Pike's death penalty to a life sentence without the possibility of parole, her attorneys earlier this week documented her history as the childhood victim of violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17. They also cited diagnoses she received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Citing the Department of Corrections, Reuters reported that in August 2001, Pike was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder in an assault on another inmate.
The Source: Information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, which obtained statements from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the Tennessee Department of Corrections, and Reuters, which obtained a petition from Christa Pike's lawyers requesting the governor commute Pike's death penalty. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.