Updates: Christa Pike is walking with help and eating after failed execution attempt, her attorneys say

After the second round of lethal drugs failed to kill Christa Pike, she lay on a gurney for an hour and a half before an ambulance took her to a hospital.

Newly released recordings from Nashville’s emergency dispatch reveal why. A communication breakdown kept the caravan of emergency vehicles from getting to the prison. At one point, Department of Emergency Communications workers were trying to figure out if the requests for help were even real.

“We are trying to find out if that is an actual thing that is happening, and we need to send an ambulance … or if this is someone that is just, basically, prank calling,” a dispatcher said in one call.

Nashville DEC provided WPLN with nearly a dozen recordings — all but the first call for help. An agency representative said in that call, the prison worker’s voice would be too recognizable, so it was released as a transcript.

“We’ve been carrying out an execution tonight,” the transcript reads in part. “We’ve administered 10 grams of pentobarbital. The person is not yet deceased. That started approximately one hour ago. And we’re calling for an ambulance.”

Shortly after, one of Pike’s attorneys called for help as well. Neither he nor other callers had a code to verify the call was real and coming from the prison. That code would have to come from staff.

But workers at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution explicitly denied needing help several times.

“We didn’t call anybody,” one prison worker told dispatch, after being told crews were standing by. “I would have been the one to call you guys. We didn’t call anyone.”

Under Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, there’s a five-minute waiting period after all the killing drugs have been injected. After that, a curtain closes over the witness bay, and the doctor comes out to certify death.

The curtain closed after Christa Pike’s second dose of the drug at 8:16 p.m. Witnesses sat listening to Pike’s ragged breathing over a loudspeaker until 8:53 p.m. It’s unclear whether medical workers in the death chamber were giving her care when the curtain was closed. In a later press briefing, Pike’s attorneys said they still don’t know what was happening in the room.

At 9:53 p.m., an emergency services worker told dispatch the ambulance carrying Pike was en route, according to the recordings.

In the lead-up to the failed execution, Pike’s attorneys argued the Department of Correction needed a backup plan. Their medical experts had predicted Pike’s small, fragile veins would make it hard to administer the drugs into her properly, and a failure was possible. Tennessee Supreme Court judges determined that the concern was too speculative for them to act.

Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection, has been moved back to prison, her attorneys said Saturday.

Pike, 50, was discharged from the hospital and is back at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said in a written statement.

“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” the statement said.

Pike had been hospitalized since surviving two doses of pentobarbital as the state attempted to execute her on Sept. 30 for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. At one point she was on a ventilator and her attorneys did not expect her to survive. However, they said Pike woke up and began talking and walking with assistance.

The Death Penalty Information Center says Pike is the first person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution.

The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said what went wrong in the execution. Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on whether a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue instead of entering her bloodstream. Pike’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed.”

The failed execution brought renewed scrutiny to how Tennessee carries out death sentences.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has since postponed the state’s only other scheduled execution this year and ordered a review of what went wrong. The state’s prison chief resigned in the wake of the failed execution

As the process got underway Pike was asked if she had a final statement and she spoke of being at peace. About five minutes later, she raised her head and said her arm hurt. Later, she appeared to lose consciousness but could be heard breathing heavily until media witnesses were escorted from the witness room nearly 90 minutes into the execution. An ambulance took her to a hospital.

Christa Pike has begun walking and eating again at a hospital a week after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her with lethal drugs, her attorneys said Thursday.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital as the state sought to giver her a lethal injection eight days ago for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. The drug didn’t kill her, and her arms were left burned and blistered, according to her lawyers. For the first few days of her hospitalization, Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator.

Her first steps on Wednesday were “limited” and she required some assistance as she walked on Thursday, her lawyers said in a statement. She is also regaining mobility in her arms, and she was able to eat for the first time.

But the lawyers warned uncertainty remains about her physical recovery and her legal standing after the attempt to carry out her death sentence.

Follow: Execution updates from WPLN 

Questions remain about Pike’s recovery and legal case

The failed execution on Sept. 30 has renewed scrutiny of how states carry out the death penalty. Texas on Wednesday carried out the first execution in the U.S. since the Tennessee attempt.

“While her physical recovery has been remarkable, significant questions remain about the long-term effects of what she endured,” her attorneys said in Thursday’s statement. “Christa is dealing with the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution, including the terror, pain and uncertainty of believing she was about to die.”

Pike regained consciousness Tuesday and was able to speak after awakening, they said.

They initially described her as “confused” soon after regaining consciousness, and said Thursday that she continued to struggle with concentration and memory. Doctors say it is too early to assess the long-term impacts, the attorneys added.

It also remains unclear whether Tennessee will try to execute her again. Her attorneys have said that they will urge Republican Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life in prison without parole.

“She should never be subjected to another execution attempt,” they said in the statement.

More: Judge orders that Christa Pike execution evidence be preserved

What went wrong with the execution remains unclear

Lee has since postponed the state’s only other scheduled execution this year and ordered a review of why the execution failed. The state’s prison chief resigned after the execution attempt.

Timeline: Lethal injection in Tennessee

Medical and lethal injection experts have focused on whether a problem with the IV line caused the drug to pool in her tissue instead of entering her bloodstream.
Pike’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that “apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed.”

State officials have offered no explanation of what occurred.

As the process got underway Pike was asked if she had a final statement and she spoke of being at peace. About five minutes later, she raised her head and said her arm hurt. Later, she appeared to lose consciousness but could be heard breathing heavily until media witnesses were escorted from the witness room nearly 90 minutes into the execution. An ambulance took her to a hospital.

Christa Pike, who has regained consciousness and is speaking a week Tennessee failed to execute her, is believed to be the only person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution. But Pike is not the first inmate to survive a botched execution attempt.

There have been dozens of botched executions before Pike, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and seven cases in recent decades where executioners failed to kill someone with their intended method. Three out of the seven inmates of documented failed executions died years later in prison, due to cancer or illness like COVID-19. Two were executed after their failed execution with a different method, and two remain alive and on death row.

Follow: Execution updates

Tennessee’s bungled attempt to execute Christa Pike was not the first time a state has failed to carry out a lethal injection over problems in the death chamber.

Pike, 50, has regained consciousness and is speaking a week after Tennessee gave her two lethal doses of pentobarbital. Outgoing Republican Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a review into what went wrong and the state has not said whether they will again try executing her, which experts say could wade into uncharted legal waters.

Pike, who was sentenced to die for torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, is one of at least eight condemned inmates in the U.S. who left their state’s execution chamber still alive because of problems carrying out the punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Pike is the only one who was actually administered lethal drugs before the process was halted, according to the organization.

Not all have faced execution a second time. Three of the inmates would die years later in prison, two remain alive and two were executed after another attempt.

Lethal injection failures in Ohio

Ohio unsuccessfully tried to put Romell Broom to death by lethal injection in September 2009. The execution was called off after two hours when technicians could not find a suitable vein, and Broom cried in pain while receiving 18 needle sticks.

Broom died in December 2020 of possible complications of COVID-19 while on Ohio’s death row.

Ohio also failed to execute another inmate, Alva Campbell, in November 2017 by lethal injection. The execution was halted after executioners couldn’t find a usable vein.

Campbell was found unresponsive in his death row cell in March 2018. It was determined that he died from natural causes.

Alabama executed inmates a second time after failed attempts

Alabama called off the execution of Doyle Lee Hamm in February 2018 because of problems getting the intravenous line connected. A doctor hired by Hamm’s legal team later wrote in a report, filed in court, that Hamm had to be carried back to his cell by correctional officers after the execution was called off because he was in so much pain.

Hamm died of natural causes on death row in November 2021.

In September 2022, Alabama unsuccessfully executed Alan Eugene Miller by lethal injection when executioners spent more than an hour trying and failing to properly insert the catheter, repeatedly puncturing Miller with needles trying to find a vein. At one point, they left him hanging vertically on a gurney before state officials made the decision to call off the execution, according to news coverage at the time.

Miller had originally asked for nitrogen gas, but the Alabama Department of Corrections told a federal district court that they could not complete the execution that way.
The state successfully executed him two years later in September 2024 with nitrogen gas.

Almost two months after failing to execute Miller, Alabama had a second failed execution, when executioners did not have enough time to get a second IV line in before the death warrant expired at midnight for Kenneth Eugene Smith.

Smith was the first person to die by nitrogen gas as an execution method in January 2024.

Idaho prisoner remains alive

Idaho halted the execution of Thomas Eugene Creech in February 2024 after medical team members repeatedly failed to find a vein to carry out the lethal injection. In some cases, they couldn’t access the vein, and in others they could but had concerns about vein quality. They attempted sites in his arms, legs, hands and feet. At one point, a medical team member left to gather more supplies.

After eight attempts, the prison warden told them to give up. Creech remains alive and on death row.

Pike was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year

Four months before Pike’s execution went awry, Tennessee officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers in May after his executioners tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line.

Lee announced soon afterward that the state would not try to execute Carruthers again for at least a year. Tennessee prison officials have said medical personnel had quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup line as required by the state’s execution protocol. Efforts to insert a central line also failed.

Carruthers remains alive and on death row.

In the year and a half leading up to Christa Pike’s failed execution, warnings about the state’s lethal injection protocol and its weaknesses piled up.

The Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville ordered Tennessee prison officials to preserve all evidence in connection with last week’s botched lethal injection of Christa Pike, including log books, medical waste and all messages sent or received by officials associated with the execution attempt.

“Anything in the actual room needs to be preserved and maintained,” Judge I’Ashea Myles said.

The judge also granted a request from Pike’s attorneys for “liberal access” to their client, ordering that prison officials will have two hours to respond to requests from lawyers for in-person visits with Pike.

Follow: Execution updates from WPLN 

Speaking outside the courtroom, Luke P. Ihnen, an assistant federal defender in Knoxville, told reporters that this was “just a first step of many to preserve and enforce Christa’s constitutional rights after this unprecedented botched execution.”

The hearing came a week after Pike was left hospitalized and in critical condition following the Sept. 30 execution attempt in which she was strapped to a gurney and administered two doses of pentobarbital, a barbiturate widely used in U.S. executions. But several minutes after the first dose, she said her arm was burning and asked whether it was supposed to feel that way. She then said, “Please try up on my shoulder higher.”

Pike’s attorneys said that after days of unconsciousness, Pike was awake again, speaking and continuing to receive critical medical care.

Randy Spivey, a post-conviction attorney representing Pike, called his client “a survivor.”

“She survived sexual abuse [and] the rapes of multiple men. She survived a suicide attempt when she was 12 and she survived the state’s attempt to execute her,” he said. “She deserves answers about what was done to her and the people of Tennessee deserve those answers, too.”

He said of the botched execution, “all of this was foreseen,” because Pike has a medical condition that would make it difficult to insert an IV to deliver the lethal doses of pentobarbital.

Spivey, who was a witness to last week’s failed execution, told NPR that after a second dose, Pike fell unconscious but continued breathing and making sounds like choking. It “went on for so long,” he said.

Following the failed execution, Tennessee’s top prison official, Frank Strada, resigned, and the state’s governor, Bill Lee, halted executions through the end of the year and ordered an independent investigation into the state’s capital punishment system.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether that would affect a second attempt to execute Pike, but speaking at Wednesday’s hearing, Tennessee Assistant Attorney General John Ayers said the decision on when or if to schedule a new execution date was up to the state’s supreme court.

Ihnen, one of the defense attorneys, said it would be “unconscionable that the state would try to execute her again.”

Pike was on death row for a murder she committed at age 18. In 1995, she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow classmate in the Knoxville Job Corps. Shipp, who was a minor at the time of the crime, received life in prison without parole for his part in the murder.

In a clemency petition filed last month, Pike’s attorneys asked that her sentence be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole, citing her history of childhood trauma.

“Local and national media covered Christa’s trial in the midst of the ‘Satanic Panic’ of the 1990s,” the attorneys said. “In truth, it was Christa’s abusive boyfriend and co-defendant, Tadaryl Shipp, who was fascinated by satanic imagery.”

The media at the time had “focused on the salacious parts of Christa’s crime, disregarding the context of her youth, trauma, and mental illness,” they added.

Critics of the death penalty are outraged at what happened to Pike during the attempt to execute her.

“This failed attempt is the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in a statement.

The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, said Pike was the first person in the history of capital punishment to survive after being injected with lethal drugs.

Copyright © 2026 NPR

Christa Pike has regained consciousness and is able to speak, according to an update from her legal team on Tuesday afternoon.

The update is the first since last week, when the Tennessee Department of Correction failed to execute Pike, who is 50, and who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Pike was rushed to a hospital where she was unconscious and on a ventilator.

The legal team says the woman is receiving critical medical care, including to her arms, and that she remains handcuffed and shackled to a bed. They are praising the first responders and medical staff treating her.

“Her recovery is medically unprecedented,” they wrote. “Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”

Follow: Botched execution updates

Late last week, the legal team announced Pike had burns and blisters on her arms. They said that was likely because her IVs were placed poorly, and that the sedative drug pentobarbital likely flowed into her flesh instead of her bloodstream.

Statement from Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender, and Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, attorneys for Christa Pike

Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.

We are incredibly grateful to the first responders and the medical team at the hospital who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her. We also want to thank thousands from all over the world who sent messages offering prayers and support for Christa.

Christa’s life has been extraordinarily difficult. She survived multiple childhood rapes, which political leaders in this state acknowledge leave lifelong scars. She survived nearly 30 years of solitary confinement and, more recently, escalating restrictive confinement leading up to her execution date. She survived two complete rounds of lethal injection per Tennessee’s protocol, despite her attorneys’ warning to the state of specific challenges with her veins. She is the only person known to have survived a complete execution attempt in the U.S. Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time. We continue to ask the Governor of Tennessee to commute Christa Pike’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

This is a developing story.

WPLN’s Catherine Sweeney was in the witness room when Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike on Sept. 30. An attempted execution in May had also failed. Here’s what Sweeney saw and heard.

Gov. Bill Lee is again tapping former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to lead an investigation into Tennessee’s execution protocols.

Lee called for the third-party review after a second failed execution this year. Medical staff unsuccessfully administered two doses of the fatal drug pentobarbital, leaving death row inmate Christa Pike in critical condition but alive at a local hospital.

Update: Execution fallout in Tennessee

The current lethal injection process was developed after Stanton’s last review found problems with how the state inspected the drugs it uses to put people to death. Former Tennessee Department of Correction commissioner Frank Strada, who helped design the new process, stepped down from his position Saturday after overseeing five total botched executions — two in Tennessee this year and three previous executions in Arizona.

Stanton’s investigation will determine if the current protocol was followed and evaluate its effectiveness from there. In the meantime, Lee has called off the remaining execution scheduled for this year.

The architect of Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocols is stepping down as leader of the Department of Correction after a second failed execution this year.

Frank Strada helped design the state’s new execution process after a 2022 review found that Tennessee had not properly inspected the drugs it uses to put people to death. Strada came to Tennessee from Arizona, where he oversaw three botched executions similar to Wednesday’s.

Christa Pike, slated to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in almost 200 years, did not die after receiving two full doses of pentobarbital. Usually only one dose is considered lethal.

Gov. Bill Lee announced Strada’s departure Saturday morning, writing in a media release that he had accepted his resignation.

“I thank Commissioner Strada for his dedicated service to Tennessee and pray God’s blessings over him in the days ahead,” Lee said in a statement.

Lee has called for another moratorium on executions and a third-party review of the state’s lethal injection protocols. He did not answer reporters’ questions Thursday morning as to why he had not called for a review after Tony Carruthers’ botched execution in May. Similar to their execution attempt of Pike, medical staff had a hard time finding a vein for Carruthers.

Pike’s attorneys say she is unconscious and on a ventilator at an area hospital following Wednesday’s botched execution, which they say Pike had predicted because of her trouble with blood draws.

“We knew this was coming,” attorney Stephen Ferrell said. “So, back in January, we asked that this problem be addressed in a way that would not lead to the torture that happened last night.”

Pike’s attorneys have argued that her sentence should be commuted since the failed execution amounted to “cruel and unusual” punishment, something that could be determined by the Tennessee Supreme Court.