Tennessee cancels executions after Christa Pike survives botched injection
CBS News · LC · trust 68/100
Updated on: October 1, 2026 / 12:44 PM EDT / CBS News
Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived the state's attempt to execute her Wednesday night when the lethal injection failed. She was transported to an area hospital, state officials said, without releasing details on her condition.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called off the remaining scheduled execution in the state this year and ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred," he said in a statement Thursday.
Pike, who was convicted of a 1995 murder, was slated to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in the last 200 years after the Supreme Court ruled earlier Wednesday that her execution could proceed.
Correctional staff gave Pike two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital at around 8 p.m. local time Wednesday, but she still had a heartbeat, had not lost consciousness and was "audibly snoring" when her attorneys filed an emergency motion to halt the procedure later in the night, according to the filing.
Close to an hour after the execution began, at 8:53 p.m. local time, there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area, the Associated Press reported.
Attorneys for Pike noted in the emergency motion that the curtain in the execution chamber had gone down twice during the ordeal.
"Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State's most serious responsibilities," Lee said in his statement, "and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective."
In a news conference late Wednesday night, AP reporter Kim Chandler, one of the media witnesses to the attempted execution, said that at one point Pike "looked toward prison officials and asked if it was supposed to feel that way."
"Her mouth fell open a few times, and she began to loudly snore," Chandler recounted, noting that the snoring continued for several minutes.
According to Chandler, the blinds to the execution chamber closed for the final time at about 8:06 p.m. When media witnesses were asked to leave the area at about 8:53 p.m., Pike could still be heard "loudly snoring, clearly very alive."
Will Puckett, a reporter for CBS affiliate WVLT, another of the media witnesses, said that after the curtain closed for the final time, "You could hear doors opening and closing. Her lawyers were in and out. Her spiritual adviser was in and out from that point. And then at 8:53, the mic was cut off after the warden said, 'Will the witnesses please exit the area.'"
In a supplemental court filing from Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, state officials said that Pike had been transported to a hospital where she was "receiving medical care."
The court filing did not provide details on her condition or which hospital she was taken to.
"Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," Pike's attorneys said in a statement provided to CBS News. "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."
In its own statement, the Tennessee Department of Correction said it "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office. The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility."
This all comes after the Supreme Court earlier Wednesday overrode a last-minute district court order to halt Pike's execution. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death at 10 a.m. local time Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that a "short" pause on the execution proceedings was needed to resolve new claims from Pike's legal team.
"The Court's decision to vacate that stay interferes with the Sixth Circuit's routine administrative handling of a capital case and unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike's claim," Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
Pike's attorneys had argued that counsel in her initial criminal case failed to properly introduce her extensive childhood experiences with abuse into their defense and was therefore ineffective.
"I am not afraid to die. I'm only nervous about the process," wrote Pike earlier this week, in a letter she penned before Lee denied her clemency petition and cleared the way for her execution to take place.
Thanking those who rallied for the governor to intervene and halt the plan, Pike said she was "at peace," regardless of the outcome of her bid. CBS News obtained a copy of the letter from her spiritual adviser, Rev. Mikey Noechel, along with a copy of another note Noechel received from Pike that contained handwritten lines from the poem "To ——" by Edgar Allan Poe. Noechel said he received the poem on Sunday and the letter on Monday.
Now 50, Pike has been incarcerated since 1995 for the murder that year of her former classmate, Colleen Slemmer. According to court records, Pike and Slemmer were students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville when Pike, then 18, tortured and killed her, allegedly over comments Slemmer, 19, had made about her relationship.
Pike's boyfriend and another friend helped carry out the attack and murder, the records said.
Pike's case has drawn international attention and some outcry, with the United Nations recently joining local advocacy groups in their calls for Lee to commute her death sentence .
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