A 50-year-old woman who has spent nearly three decades on death row has survived an execution attempt after two doses of lethal injection failed to kill her.
Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed in Tennessee for the 1995 murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 when she was convicted of the killing and was sentenced to death in 1996.
Her execution had been the subject of several legal challenges, with the case eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to proceed after a lower court had temporarily intervened.
However, the execution went badly wrong when Pike was administered two doses of the lethal drug.
Despite receiving both doses, she remained alive. Witnesses reported that Pike appeared to be in a deep sleep and was heard snoring during the prolonged execution attempt.
After the second dose failed to produce the intended result, officials eventually halted the execution.
An ambulance was brought to the prison, and Pike was taken to hospital for further medical treatment. Her current medical condition has not been publicly disclosed.
The failed execution has triggered an immediate response from Tennessee authorities. Governor Bill Lee has suspended the state’s remaining scheduled executions for 2026 and ordered an independent review into what went wrong during Pike’s execution.
Pike’s case dates back to 1995, when she was convicted of murdering Slemmer, a classmate whom she accused of attempting to take her boyfriend. She was subsequently sentenced to death in 1996 and has spent approximately 30 years on death row.
What was supposed to be the end of a decades-long death sentence has instead become an extraordinary case in which a condemned prisoner survived two attempts to execute her by lethal injection.
The investigation will now seek to determine why the execution drugs failed to produce the intended result and how the unprecedented incident occurred.