Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived an execution attempt Thursday after prison officials administered two rounds of lethal injection drugs and failed to kill her, according to her legal team, which filed an emergency motion to halt the procedure while it was still underway.
Pike, 49, was taken to a hospital following the failed execution. She is the only woman on Tennessee's death row and was convicted in 1996 of murdering a fellow Job Corps student, Colleen Slemmer, in Knoxville two years earlier.
The emergency motion from Pike's attorneys marked a rare mid-execution legal intervention. The filing argued that subjecting Pike to a second round of lethal drugs after the first failed constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
Tennessee uses a three-drug lethal injection protocol, though the specific drugs administered Thursday were not immediately disclosed. The state has faced repeated scrutiny over its execution procedures, including a 2022 pause on executions ordered by Gov. Bill Lee after an independent review found the state had failed to test lethal injection drugs for endotoxins and had not followed its own protocol in prior executions.
Executions resumed in Tennessee in 2024 after that review. Thursday's attempt on Pike was the first execution scheduled in the state this year.
Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. She was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death. Her case drew national attention because of her age at the time of the crime and because she was the first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee since the 1800s.
Her attorneys have argued for years that her sentence was disproportionate and that she suffered from severe childhood abuse and neurological damage. Multiple appeals and clemency petitions were filed in the weeks leading up to Thursday's scheduled execution.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has not issued a public statement on Pike's current medical condition or on what happens next in the legal process. It remains unclear whether the state will attempt to reschedule the execution.
At least one other state has encountered similar problems in recent years. In 2022, Alabama paused executions after multiple failed attempts to establish intravenous lines, and in 2018, Alabama death row inmate Doyle Hamm survived a botched execution attempt that lasted more than two hours before the procedure was called off. Hamm died of cancer months later.
Pike remained hospitalized as of Thursday evening. Her legal team has not indicated whether it will seek a full stay of execution or pursue a federal civil rights claim.
