Christa Pike taken to hospital after failed Tennessee execution
Christa Pike was taken to hospital after her heart continued beating following two pentobarbital injections during an attempted execution in Tennessee, her lawyer said. Her legal team sought emergency intervention, while the state had not immediately commented.
Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike was taken to hospital after surviving an attempted lethal injection, according to her lawyer. Pike’s legal team said two syringes of pentobarbital had been administered but that she remained alive and was audibly snoring. They filed an emergency motion seeking to halt the execution and provide medical care.
The attempted execution followed a series of court interventions. The Sixth Circuit had temporarily paused the process to consider whether evidence of Pike’s childhood sexual abuse had been properly considered at sentencing, but the US Supreme Court overturned the stay. A district judge later noted that medical personnel had begun providing care requested in the emergency motion.
The state of Tennessee had not issued an immediate public comment, according to the supplied report. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she and her boyfriend met at a job-training facility. Pike had said in a clemency petition that she intended to beat Slemmer but did not intend to kill her.
She was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, according to the supplied material. Tennessee had switched to single-drug pentobarbital executions in 2024 after an earlier execution was halted because officials failed to establish an intravenous line.
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