Christa Pike survives Tennessee execution attempt
Christa Pike, the Tennessee woman on death row for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, was taken to a hospital after the state failed to execute her by lethal injection.
Pike, who is 50, was given two doses of pentobarbital, but her lawyers said she remained alive and could still be heard snoring behind the curtain in the execution chamber.
She had been scheduled to die Wednesday evening. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Governor Bill Lee paused the state’s remaining executions for the rest of 2026 and ordered a third-party review of what happened. The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed the state’s execution protocol.
Pike was convicted in 1996 in the death of Slemmer, a Job Corps classmate, in an attack carried out with Tadaryl Shipp, her then-boyfriend. The condition of Pike in hospital and the state’s explanation for why the execution failed remain unclear.
Reporting
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- What Did Christa Pike Do? What to Know About the Botched Tennessee Execution.The New York Times
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