Execution 50-year-old Christa Gail Pikeconvicted of the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, ended in unprecedented failure: after two doses of pentobarbital, the woman remained alive.
Two doses – but the execution did not take place
The death sentence was to be carried out September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville, Tennessee.
Pike was strapped to a gurney and the injection of pentobarbital, the drug Tennessee uses for lethal injection, began.
But the procedure did not go according to plan.
According to the testimony of journalists present, Pike continued to breathe after the drug was administered. She was also given a backup set of the drug – in fact second dose of pentobarbitalhowever, even after this death did not occur.
Journalists reported loud breathing and sounds similar to snoring. Witnesses were eventually escorted from the premises and Pike was taken to hospital.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections initially stated that staff had completed all steps of the established protocol, but there were no further procedures remaining after the use of the primary and backup drugs.
Pike is unconscious and on a ventilator.
According to the latest information from her lawyers, Pike remains in critical condition, unconscious and connected to a ventilator.
The defense claims the problems arose with intravenous catheters. According to lawyers, the veins could have been damaged and a significant part of the pentobarbital did not enter the bloodstream directly, but into the surrounding tissue.
A court document filed by her attorneys said that after being taken to the hospital, both of Pike’s hands were swollen, with burns and blisters. Doctors are trying to save her life and remove the drug from her body.
During the procedure, Pike herself complained of severe pain in her arm. The defense warned the courts before the execution that due to her health and difficulties with venous access, a lethal injection could lead to a protracted and painful procedure.
“You screwed up!”
The relatives of the murdered girl watched what was happening. Colleen’s mother Mae Martinezand her husband came from Florida specifically to be present at the execution of the sentence.
According to her, instead of the expected conclusion to the case that lasted more than three decades, the family saw chaos.
“I didn’t get justice for my daughter.”
Martinez told reporters that she saw Pike moving her legs and head and trying to get up. After the first injection, the execution did not end in death; after the second, the same thing happened.
When asked by NBC News what she would like to say to the governor and attorney general of Tennessee, the mother of the deceased responded very sharply:
“You screwed up!”
Now Martinez is demanding an apology from state authorities. To travel from Florida to Tennessee, the family also had to collect donations.
What happened in 1995
One of Tennessee’s most famous criminal cases is behind the current drama.
Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old. She, along with Krista Pike and other young people, participated in the Job Corps training program in Knoxville.
In January 1995, Pike, then 18, along with her boyfriend Tadaril Shipp and acquaintance Shadollah Peterson, lured Slemmer to a remote location near the University of Tennessee agricultural campus.
Slammer was subjected to a sustained attack. According to the court case, she was beaten, cut, stabbed several times in the back with a small meat cleaver, and the fatal head injuries were inflicted by a piece of asphalt.
There was a carving on the chest of the deceased pentagram.
The investigation also found that after the murder, Pike took a fragment of the victim’s skull. Subsequently, this evidence became one of the most famous details of the case.
Was this a “satanic murder”?
The Pike case is often called a satanic or ritual murder. There are reasons for this characterization, but a caveat is necessary here.
Satanic symbols did appear in the investigation materials. Pike and Shipp were wearing jewelry with pentagrams when arrested, and Shipp was found to be in possession of items associated with Satanic symbols. The pentagram was also carved on the body of the deceased.
However, from the court materials it follows that Shipp himself denied that the murder was originally planned as satanic sacrifice. Therefore, it is more accurate to talk about a murder in which elements of Satanic symbolism were present, and not about a proven pre-planned ritual sacrifice.
Death sentence in 1996
Pike was found guilty of first-degree murder. IN 1996 the jury sentenced her to death.
Shipp was also found guilty of first-degree murder, but received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
Pike was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. If the execution had taken place, it would have been the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Her criminal story did not end there. While already incarcerated, Pike was convicted in 2001 of attempting to murder another inmate.
30 years of litigation
Since the death sentence, Pike’s case has gone through numerous appeals in state and federal courts.
The defense in recent years has focused on her childhood and argued that the sentencing did not sufficiently take into account her experiences of sexual abuse and other trauma as a minor.
Lawyers sought to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of release.
But the governor of Tennessee Bill Lee refused to grant a pardon.
The execution was stopped – and allowed again on the same day
The last hours before the execution of the sentence turned into a separate legal drama.
On September 30, the federal appeals court for the Sixth Circuit suspended the execution to allow time to consider further defense arguments.
Tennessee authorities immediately contacted US Supreme Court.
On the same day, the Supreme Court lifted the stay and allowed the sentence to be carried out. Three justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson—dissented from the majority decision.
This gave authorities the opportunity to continue the execution until the warrant expired at midnight.
But Pike survived the procedure itself.
The governor stopped the following executions
After the incident, Governor Bill Lee ordered independent verification.
The remaining executions scheduled for 2026 in Tennessee will not proceed.
Lee stated that it was necessary to establish why the result was completely different from the previous application of the established protocol.
And on October 3, another consequence of the scandal became known: the commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Corrections Frank Strada resigns.
Is it possible to try to execute Pike again?
This is one of the main questions that arose after the incident.
The very fact that the first attempt to carry out the death sentence ended in failure does not automatically mean the death sentence itself will be abolished. However, a new attempt would require further legal procedures and would almost certainly be subject to further litigation.
Pike’s lawyers are already calling for the death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment. They also asked the court to preserve all evidence related to the procedure on September 30 so that the reasons for what happened could be established.
At the moment, the question of a new execution date is not raised: at first it remains unknown, will Pike herself survive and what will be the consequences of administering two doses of pentobarbital?.
Editorial comment. The story of Krista Pike once again brought two very different questions side by side. The first is the gravity of the crime and the more than 30-year wait for Colleen Slemmer’s family to carry out the sentence imposed by the court. The second is the ability of the state to carry out a statutory execution according to its own procedures. The Sept. 30 fiasco doesn’t erase the facts of the 1995 murder, but it does create a new legal and public debate in its own right about what happened in Tennessee’s death row.
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