United States: Convicted murderer Christa Pike is unconscious, intubated, and receiving breathing assistance from a ventilator after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, her attorneys said on Friday.
The 50-year-old remains in critical condition at a Nashville hospital, two days after the state administered two doses of pentobarbital but failed to kill her. Her lawyers said she has suffered significant injuries to both arms.
Hospital staff are working to save Pike’s life and clear the lethal drug pentobarbital from her system, according to an emergency court filing by her attorneys. The filing seeks an order requiring Tennessee’s Department of Correction to preserve evidence from Wednesday night’s execution attempt.
"At no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body," Pike’s lawyers said in the filing before the Chancery Court for the State of Tennessee Twentieth Judicial District.
Pike’s attorneys have said the execution team’s difficulties administering the drug were related to intravenous access, an issue they had warned the state and courts about before the execution.
The filing offers the most detailed account so far of the medical consequences of the attempted execution. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has said the execution followed the state’s established protocol. It was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year, and Lee has halted further state executions for the rest of 2026 while ordering an independent review of the incident.
Pike’s failed execution has also renewed scrutiny of Tennessee’s use of lethal injection and capital punishment in the US.
Vanderbilt University law professor Christopher Slobogin said the case could deepen opposition to capital punishment.
“What happened to her was in effect torture,” Slobogin said, adding that even supporters of the death penalty might conclude that “if we can't get this process right, we should just stop doing it.”
Pastor Kevin Riggs of Franklin Community Church said he did not expect the incident to significantly change attitudes towards capital punishment in Tennessee. He predicted that Republican leaders would instead take a harder line on the issue.
“There’s no humane way to kill someone,” Riggs said.
Pike was critically ill and receiving “life-saving medical care” at a Nashville hospital on Thursday, her lawyers said, after surviving the failed execution.
The execution took place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday. It was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year and has highlighted difficulties US states face in carrying out lethal injections and finding alternative methods of capital punishment.
Pike was sentenced to death in the 1990s after being convicted of killing her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when Pike was 18.
She had been scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
