She was saved twice: the first for formal reasons, the second because the drug didn’t work. Christa Pike, sentenced to death in Tennessee for a murder committed when she was 18, survived two lethal injections. The woman, now in her fifties, was taken to hospital. The lawyers say they do not know his condition and ask for the conviction to be overturned.
Christa Pike survived lethal injections
The execution was scheduled in a Nashville prison. The first was suspended by a judge. Then came the green light from the Supreme Court but, according to what was reported by the journalists present and the defense, despite the two injections the woman survived.
Pike’s lawyers have filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately block and stay the execution. For lawyers, the right not to suffer cruel punishment was violated.
It’s the second time this year that lethal injection doesn’t go as planned in Tennessee. Tony Carruthers (convicted of three murders committed in 1994) lay in agony for an hour because they couldn’t find a vein for the injection. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended further executions scheduled between now and the end of the year.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, lethal injection is the most error-prone procedure. In a 2022 annual review, the organization found that 35% of 20 execution attempts made that year had “obvious problems.”
BREAKING: Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is still alive after 2 lethal injections, according to her lawyer.
At 8:26 pm local time, witnesses said executioners had “injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring,” her lawyers… pic.twitter.com/X09LALjb7C
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 1, 2026
The reasons for the conviction
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate of hers in Knoxville’s Job Corps job training program, when she was 18. The crime was linked to a romantic rivalry. Her two accomplices, also teenagers — her boyfriend at the time, 17, and another 18-year-old girl — avoided the death penalty. The first was sentenced to life imprisonment, while the second obtained a suspended sentence in exchange for her testimony against the other two.
In these thirty years there have been many requests for mercy made by NGOs and human rights associations, both in consideration of the young age at which Pike committed the crime and due to her psychological conditions (in prison she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder). Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, rejected calls Monday for his sentence to be commuted.