“Unprecedented”: Woman survives two doses of lethal drug during execution in the United States

Authorities in Tennessee were unable to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert called it an unprecedented case, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended the only other execution scheduled for this year.

Pike, 50, was alive and snoring loudly after the attempted lethal injection and was taken by ambulance from the prison, her lawyers said. She was receiving treatment at a hospital, but they said they had not been informed of her condition.

The execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday for the murder she committed when she was 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court halted the lethal injection just an hour before it was to begin, and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that stay.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her lawyers said in court documents filed late Wednesday.

Governor Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what happened” and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.

“Carrying out a legally 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 lawful and constitutional, but effective,” he said.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that they “followed every step of the state’s legal and established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s office.”

The state’s execution protocol requires a second set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate has not expired” after the first set. It does not specify what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “unique and unprecedented.”

Seven other people have survived due to medical problems because execution teams could not find a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has remained alive after receiving the drugs used in those executions, she said.

Witnesses detail the execution process

Media witnesses watching from a separate room said authorities raised the execution chamber curtains at 7:27 p.m., 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,” she said in her “final” words. She described herself as being at peace.

But Pike remained awake and at one point lifted her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was unclear what she was referring to.

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 turned off at 8:53 p.m. At that time, it was announced that media witnesses would be escorted out of the area.

Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion Wednesday with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “needless agony” and that her right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment was being violated. They also filed motions in the 6th Circuit court and the district court.

This is the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: in May, state officials canceled the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners failed to place an IV line to administer pentobarbital after more than an hour.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training center in Knoxville, in 1995. The case drew wide attention in part because a pentagram carved into Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime fueled fears about Satan worship during the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

Decision that halted execution is immediately appealed

Pike was initially scheduled for morning execution, and witnesses had gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to grant a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s claims of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at sentencing.

After the stay was granted, the Attorney General’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last minute traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

Later that day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain its order, while the three liberal members signed a dissenting vote saying that Pike’s claims deserved closer examination.

Pike does not deny committing the murder, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness, and her claims of severe sexual abuse.

Case reignites debate over death penalty for teenagers

As the execution date approached, the debate over the death penalty for juvenile offenders was reignited.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell noted that Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had similar sentences overturned.

After the murder, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she claimed she only wanted to fight Slemmer, but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “stop.”

“I was an 18-year-old girl with a mental illness. It took many years for me to even realize the gravity of what I had done,” Pike stated.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen"

Slemmer’s mother had come to the prison in hopes of seeing the lethal injection proceed. She has said she waited 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,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez could not be reached by phone for comment after the execution was halted.

The murder shook the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors indicated that Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on January 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram—a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan—into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime occurred and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Executions of women are rare in the US

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the United States this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it would change from a three-drug lethal injection protocol to a single pentobarbital drug. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith, acknowledging it had not ensured its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.