The Failed Execution of Christa Pike, and Some Reflections on the Use of Lethal Injection for State-Sanctioned Killing
At around 7:20 PM local time on 30 September 2026, the “process” of Christa Pike’s execution began at Riverbed Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Two “lethal” injections of pentobarbital later, Pike was still alive, although critically ill, and was thereupon transferred to a nearby, and as yet unnamed, medical facility. The execution, scheduled by the Tennessee Supreme Court exactly a year earlier, and due to commence at 10:00 AM that day, had been temporarily delayed by the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, which has jurisdiction over the state of Tennessee. The stay, to reconsider Pike’s childhood history of abuse and neglect, was rapidly overturned by the US Supreme Court at the request of the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
After the failed execution, Pike’s attorneys released a statement: “Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy. Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital. We have not been informed as to her condition.” Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee has since ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review” and put on hold on any further executions in his state for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Department of Correction claims that the state had followed the “State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.” The state of Tennessee, presumably following the same protocol, also failed to execute Tony Carruthers in May 2026, who was then given a one-year reprieve.
Christa Gail Pike, who was 18 at the time she committed the crime, was treated as an adult and convicted by a jury on 22 March 1996 on two counts of first-degree premedicated murder, for which she was sentenced to death by electrocution, and conspiracy to murder, for which she received a 25-year prison term. Her younger co-defendant, Tadaryl Shipp, was sentenced to life with parole, while Shadolla Peterson was convicted as an accessory to the crime and was sentenced to probation. There can be little doubt that the crime they committed was callous in its conception and brutal in its execution. Colleen Slemmer, a vulnerable, and unsuspecting, fellow student at the Job Corps Training Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, was lured on 12 January 1995 to a secluded wooded area, near a steam plant at the University of Tennessee agricultural campus, and set upon by Pike and Shipp, while Peterson acted as a lookout. Slemmer was attacked with a box cutter and a meat cleaver, and then struck repeatedly on the head with a piece of asphalt, despite her repeated pleas for mercy. A pentagram was carved into her chest, and a piece of her skull was retrieved as a trophy. Slemmer’s body was found the following morning, and both perpetrators were arrested within 36 hours and confessed to their misdeeds.
Following the imposition of her death sentence, Pike spent thirty years in prison, during which appeals for clemency were repeatedly rejected by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals and the Tennessee Supreme Court. Pike’s tragic history of prenatal alcohol exposure, neglect and repeated sexual assaults as a child, alcohol and marijuana dependency from the age of 12, and episodes of deliberate self-harm, including attempts at suicide, failed to convince the appellate courts in her home state, while the US Supreme Court declined to hear her case.
Pike was originally sentenced to death by electrocution, but by the time her turn came up, which would have made her the first woman to be executed in Tennessee since 1820, the state had adopted lethal injection with a single dose of pentobarbital as its preferred method for execution. As the day of her execution approached, Pike appeared to have come to terms with her impending death and asked for an all-female execution team. She seemed more concerned about the process itself, justifiably so in retrospect, given her history of thrombocytosis and difficult-to-find veins.
While debates around the relative merits and demerits of the death penalty will continue for years to come, it must be remembered that executions are subject to the Eight Amendment of the US Constitution which prohibits the infliction of “cruel and unnecessary punishment.” Tori Gessner, a reporter and anchor at WKRN Nashville, witnessed the execution and reported that Pike snored intermittently, complained of a spot in her arm that was “burning and hurting” and that her arm felt like it was “about to burst open”, and continued to breathe at the end of the procedure. In the light of an eyewitness report by her attorney Randy Spivey that as many as seven attempts were made to cannulate the veins in Pike’s left arm, it seems highly likely that the cannula used for the infusion was incorrectly positioned, and some of the pentobarbital may have extravasated into the tissues surrounding the vein, causing severe local irritation.
The death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976, following a brief period of suspension from 1972, and features in the statute books of 27 states, including four states where there is currently an executive moratorium. Since reinstatement in 1976, 1,682 executions have been carried out in America, of which 602 were in the state of Texas. Only 18 women were executed during this period. The federal government also reintroduced the death penalty during the second Trump administration in February 2025, overturning a moratorium under President Biden.
The five legal methods of execution in the US include lethal injection, lethal gas inhalation (nitrogen hypoxia), electrocution (electric chair), the firing squad, and hanging (a rarely used back-up option). Lethal injection, which was first used in 1982 and has since become the preferred mode of execution in all states and also by the federal government. The original three-drug protocol of a sedative/anaesthetic, a paralytic agent, and potassium chloride (to stop the heart) has been replaced by pentobarbital, a central nervous system depressant which is often used to euthanise pet animals. The use of pentobarbital was meant to simplify the procedure.
Lethal injection can be difficult if a suitable vein cannot readily be found, especially when appropriately skilled and willing staff choose not to participate in the procedure, and also because pharmaceutical manufacturers may be unwilling to provide the required chemicals for this purpose. It does little to restore public confidence in the most extreme form of criminal justice if the state can be seen to attempt to kill its convicted subjects in such an amateur manner. While many Americans continue to seek retribution for violent crime, and given that the death penalty remains an option in the majority of American states, the choice of lethal injection must be considered suspect in the light of several reports of botched executions, including the most recent examples from the state of Tennessee.
Ashis Banerjee
Reference:
Mbamalu, David, and Banerjee, Ashis. Methods of Obtaining Peripheral Venous Access in Difficult Situations. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 1999, 75: 459-462 (Cited in Russell Bucklew v. Anne Precythe, et al. US Supreme Court. No 17-8151. July 23, 2018)