Christa Pike’s lawyers have shared a major update on the death row inmate’s condition after Tennessee’s attempt to execute her ended with her surviving two doses of lethal injection.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed on September 30 in what was expected to become a historic moment, as she would have been the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Christa Pike’s execution in Tennessee went terribly wrong after two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill her. She was eventually taken to a hospital in critical condition and placed on a ventilator. Her attorneys had warned beforehand that problems with her veins could make the lethal injection difficult, but the execution proceeded after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected attempts to stop it.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, lured Slemmer to a wooded area in Knoxville, where Pike attacked her with a box cutter and a rock. Shipp was also convicted and received a life sentence, while Pike received the death penalty.
Her lawyers had spent months challenging Tennessee’s execution plans, warning that repeated attempts to establish an IV could cause serious pain and complications. They also pointed to Pike’s history of childhood abuse, mental-health diagnoses, and nearly three decades on death row as part of her clemency case. Despite those concerns, Tennessee carried out the execution on September 30.
According to Pike’s attorneys, medical staff made multiple attempts to establish IV access, with one lawyer saying he counted seven needles in her left arm. Witnesses reported that Pike struggled after the first dose, while a second dose also failed to end her life. After the state reached the maximum number of doses allowed under its protocol, Pike was taken from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to a hospital for emergency treatment.