Pike is being treated in hospital where doctors are working to keep her alive. (Reuters photo)
Convicted murderer Christa Pike remains in critical condition after Tennessee’s attempt to execute her failed, leaving her unconscious and dependent on a ventilator, her lawyers said Friday.
The 50-year-old received two doses of pentobarbital, but the drug did not kill her. Lee has since halted further executions in Tennessee for the remainder of 2026 and ordered an independent review into what happened. Pike was convicted of killing her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. She had been scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Pike is being treated in hospital, where doctors are working to keep her alive and remove the lethal drug pentobarbital from her system, according to her attorneys. Her lawyers said she has suffered significant injuries to both arms and remains intubated, meaning a breathing tube has been placed in her airway and connected to a ventilator to help her breathe. Pike’s lawyers said problems with intravenous access prevented the drugs from being properly delivered. Pike’s body,” Pike’s lawyers said in a filing in the Chancery Court for the State of Tennessee Twentieth Judicial District. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has said the execution was carried out according to the state’s established protocol.
They made the disclosure in an emergency court filing seeking an order requiring Tennessee’s Department of Correction to preserve evidence from Wednesday night’s failed execution. The filing gave the most detailed account so far of what happened during the execution. “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. However, it was the second failed execution in the state this year. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Pike’s attorneys had warned Tennessee officials and courts before the execution about difficulties involving intravenous access, which is needed to administer the lethal injection.