Tennessee was set to execute the first woman in the state in the last 200 years, but that woman is still breathing. After two failed lethal injections, Christa Pike is in critical condition and receiving care. One of her attorneys, Randall Spivey, was there during the failed execution attempt and told reporters, “I’m haunted by last night.”
Woman is Alive After Lethal Injection
Christa Pike was the youngest woman to be convicted and sentenced to death for a murder she committed at 18 in January 1995. While some believe she is receiving the punishment she deserves for how she killed Colleen Slemmer, others are questioning the execution procedure and where it went wrong.
Spivey nor her other attorney, Stephen Ferrell, has seen Pike in the hospital. Just before her scheduled execution, they were filing for clemency to have her conviction reduced to life in prison and her life spared, but the Tennessee governor denied their request.
The Failed Execution
Spivey told reporters that he counted at least seven needles inserted into Pike’s arm, “one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm after an unsuccessful attempt.” Her right arm turned purple after a second round of pentobarbital, which is a sedative used as part of Tennessee’s execution protocol. There was “blistering and burning around the sites of the injection,” according to her attorneys.
Inside the witness rooms, several sat, including Pike’s attorneys and several media personnel. The victim’s mother, May Martinez, and her husband sat in a separate room. When the curtains to the execution chamber opened at 7:26 p.m. for those behind the glass to witness, one media personnel said that Pike complained that her “arm feels like it’s about to burst open.”
Other witnesses described Pike’s demeanor as moaning, groaning, kicking, and that spots on her arms were “really throbbing.” Minutes passed after the second dose, and “it was clear that Miss Pike was still breathing,” Spivey said.
Pike was hauled in an ambulance over an hour later from the Nashville prison and received medical care during the ride. “Last night was not just inefficient; it was cruel, and it was torturous,” Spivey said.
Execution is Stayed Pending Investigation
Medical experts weighed in on the situation, saying that the drugs administered into Pike likely did not make it directly into her bloodstream, but into the tissue around it. Dr. Jonathan Groner with the Ohio State University College of Medicine explained the drug was not being properly inserted into the vein. “I’ve seen partial-thickness burns look red or purple,” Groner said.
Pike had requested other methods of execution because she worried based on the issues throughout her life when it came to routine blood draws. “I do know that that really was her biggest fear,” Ferrell said. “It was not a fear of dying. It was a fear of a prolonged, painful, traumatic death, and that’s what happened minus the death.”
Spivey and Ferrell appealed her execution following the harrowing failed attempt, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has stayed the execution until a third-party investigation figures out what went wrong. “This is a tragedy. There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn’t have happened,” Lee said at a news conference Thursday morning.
Killing of Colleen Slemmer
Meanwhile, Slemmer’s mother is disappointed with the situation. “I didn’t get justice for my daughter,” she told reporters on Thursday. Her daughter was senselessly and brutally murdered on January 12, 1995, by Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp.
The two lured the victim out into an isolated area and violently beat and cut her to death. They carved a satanic symbol into her before leaving her for dead. Since Shipp was 17 years old at the time, he was spared death and received a life sentence, and was recently denied parole in 2025. As for Pike, she became the youngest to receive the death penalty and Tennessee’s first woman in 200 years to be executed.
