Christa Pike remained unconscious and on a ventilator in a Nashville-area hospital after a failed lethal injection attempt in Tennessee. Her attorneys reported her condition in a court filing on 2 October 2026.
Prison officials at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville attempted to execute the 50-year-old death row inmate on 1 October. They injected two doses of pentobarbital. Witnesses later heard her snoring loudly before an ambulance took her away.
Attorney Luke Ihnen stated in the filing: “Ms. Pike remains critically ill and is being treated at a Nashville-area hospital. She is intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious.” Hospital staff worked to clear the drug from her system. Both of her arms were swollen, burned and blistered.
The attorneys said problems with the IV lines caused the drug to enter her body instead of her bloodstream. They wrote: “Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body.” Officials then prepared and administered a second dose.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job Corps centre. She would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Meanwhile, attorney Randy Spivey said earlier: “After having endured solitary confinement for more than 20 years and a full attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty. The governor must commute Christa’s sentence now.”
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered a third-party review of the incident and halted the state’s next scheduled execution. He said the state needed to determine why the outcome differed from previous executions. Attorneys also filed an emergency motion seeking to preserve all evidence related to the attempt.
