Tennessee Fails to Execute Christa Pike After Two Lethal Injections; Governor Orders Review

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee tried and failed on Wednesday night to execute Christa Pike, the state's only woman on death row, after two doses of lethal injection drugs did not kill her. Pike, 50, was taken to an outside hospital. Her attorneys said Thursday that she was alive and receiving lifesaving medical care.

Pike was to have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Media witnesses said officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney. Her last words, they said, were: "I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love."

What followed, witnesses said, was far from routine. Reporters in the viewing room described a team struggling to establish IV access for more than an hour, with at least seven needles used in her left arm alone. Pike remained conscious at points, raised her head and asked officials whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. Witnesses quoted her as saying her arm felt "like it's about to burst open." After two doses of pentobarbital, they said, she could be heard snoring loudly and moving, and she did not die.

Gov. Bill Lee said he was disappointed and ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred." He also said the one other execution still scheduled for this year will not take place. The Tennessee Department of Correction defended its conduct. Spokesperson Dorinda Carter told The Tennessean that the department "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office."

Pike's lawyers said the state had "once again failed to carry out a lawful execution." It was the second botched attempt in Tennessee this year. In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers was called off after medical staff could not establish IV access, a process that also dragged on for more than an hour. Pike had sued over the state's execution protocol before her death date, and the outcome is likely to bring fresh legal challenges from other inmates facing the same procedures.

Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, committed when Pike was 18. She had spent more than 30 years on death row. Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, who has long pushed for the sentence to be carried out, said the outcome "was a mess" and criticized state officials for how it was handled.

The failure leaves Tennessee with unanswered questions about training, equipment and the drug protocol, and about what the state does with a condemned prisoner who has already survived one attempt. The governor's review will examine how a procedure the state describes as carefully scripted went wrong twice in five months. Pike's attorneys have said her medical condition is serious, and officials have not yet said when, or whether, another attempt could be made.