Execution in Tennessee fails as woman survives two lethal injections

The crime and sentence

In 1996, Christa Gail Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death for killing a 19-year-old acquaintance. According to BILD, the victim was Colleen Slemmer, whom Pike lured in January 1995, together with her then-boyfriend (17) and a female friend, to a remote wooded area near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. BILD reports the motive was jealousy — Pike reportedly believed Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend away. Pike and her boyfriend tortured the victim, and Pike carved a pentagram — a satanic symbol — into her chest before killing her with a chunk of asphalt, while the third teenager kept watch.

A legal tug-of-war

The execution had been scheduled for Wednesday morning local time. According to BILD, the last meal had already been served and witnesses had taken their seats at the high-security prison in Nashville when a federal appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, halted the execution to review whether sexual abuse Pike says she suffered as a child had been properly weighed during sentencing. Pike argued that the state initially dismissed her abuse claims as fabricated but later acknowledged them as genuine, according to tagesschau. Tennessee then filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, accusing the defense of a last-minute delay tactic and arguing that the severity of the crime would outweigh the childhood trauma regardless. The Supreme Court granted the request, overturning the lower court's stay. Three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented; Sotomayor, as reported by tagesschau, called the move "extraordinary," since it allowed the state to proceed before doubts about the earlier proceedings could be properly reviewed.

A botched execution

On Wednesday evening, around 8:26 p.m., witnesses reported that executioners had injected both syringes with the lethal chemicals, yet Pike remained alive and was heard snoring. Judge Kyle Hixson told attorneys in a conference call that the state had not declared Pike dead, and that corrections officials had ordered emergency medical care and her transport to a hospital. Robin M. Maher, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told BILD the case was "unique and unprecedented" — people have survived execution attempts before due to failed vein access, but never after the lethal drugs themselves were administered. Tagesschau cites another expert who called the incident an "unprecedented failure." The corrections department stated that all legally mandated and approved protocol steps had been followed and that the substance used had always been effective in the past. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, as reported by tagesschau, ordered an independent investigation and suspended all other executions planned in the state for the remainder of the year. According to the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, cited by tagesschau, Pike was the only woman on Tennessee's death row and the first woman scheduled for execution in the state since 1819.