Christa Pike survived attempted execution. Condition, case updates

Updated Oct. 2, 2026, 3:47 p.m. ET

Death row inmate Christa Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator after undergoing a failed execution attempt in Tennessee, according to a new emergency court motion.

Pike’s attorneys are seeking to preserve all evidence related to Pike’s botched execution, according to the court filing on Oct. 2.

The document revealed more details about Pike’s condition, saying she was intubated, on a ventilator and unconscious, and that both her arms where were swollen, burned, and blistered from the two doses of pentobarbital administered to her. Pike was still in critical condition at a Nashville-area hospital as of the evening of Oct. 1, the motion said.

“Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system,” her attorneys said Friday, comparing pentobarbital to bleach and Drano. “It is caustic and highly alkaline and burns upon contact, including skin, tissue, and veins.”

Pike, 50, survived the execution attempt and and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, her attorneys have said.

“Apparently 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,” the emergency motion said. “Instead of remedying this failure, TDOC elected to prepare a backup set of syringes (if they were not also prepared earlier that day) and then administered another lethal dose of pentobarbital.”

Pike is alive and receiving care, lawyers say

One day earlier, Randy Spivey, one of Pike’s attorneys said he did not have much sense of her prognosis but were told she was “alive and receiving lifesaving medical care.”

Attorneys said her condition was unchanged as of late the night of Oct. 1. USA TODAY has reached out to Pike’s legal team on Oct. 2 for any updates to her status. Tennessee officials haven’t released any information about Pike’s health condition or how the lethal injection could have failed. The Department of Correction said it followed protocol.

The failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to call for an independent investigation and put a pause on executions in the state for the remainder of the year. He called what happened in Pike’s death chamber “disturbing” and a “tragedy.”

President Donald Trump also weighed in.

“How does that happen?” he said on Oct. 1. “It shouldn’t be very difficult.”

Pike was to be put to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend brutally tortured and killed Slemmer. The execution attempt came after a chaotic day of last-minute legal wrangling that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pike appears to be the first person known to have survived after execution drugs entered her body, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

Here’s the latest on what we know:

Christa Pike’s lawyers call for sentence to be commuted after botched execution

Pike’s legal team has called on Lee to commute Pike’s sentence.

“Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty,” Spivey said.

Amnesty International has spoken out in favor of clemency for Pike and commuting the sentences of other Tennessee death row inmates, arguing that Pike’s failed execution and that of Tony Carruthers earlier this year pointed to “an extended history of botched executions” in the state.

“There will be a stay of hers and all executions under my watch through the end of the year going forward,” Lee told reporters on Oct. 1.

What happened in failed lethal injection?

It’s not yet clear what caused two rounds of lethal injection drugs to fail.

Pike’s attorneys said she was cooperative during the lethal injection process, as officials had trouble placing an intravenous line for the drugs to be administered. It took an hour and multiple attempts to place the lines, her attorneys said.

Stephen Ferrell, another of Pike’s attorneys, said Pike had been concerned that a blood condition and issues with her veins would make her execution particularly difficult.

Medical experts who testified on her behalf predicted that the intravenous line could become dislodged or pierce through her veins, Ferrell said.

“It sounds like that is likely to have occurred,” he said. “And so that the lethal injection drugs were not going directly into the bloodstream, but were rather ending up in her arm.”

Witnesses in the execution chamber late on Sept. 30 said they were ushered out while they could still hear snoring from Pike.

Why Christa Pike was sentenced to death

In 1995, then 18-year-old Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, and another friend lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to the woods in Knoxville, where Shipp and Pike tortured and killed her. Pike cut Slemmer’s throat and crushed her skull with a rock.

Prosecutors said Pike suspected Slemmer was interested in Shipp romantically, and that she bragged about the murder to other students. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison, not eligible for the death penalty at 17 when the crime was committed.

May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, was present during the botched execution as a witness. Martinez told People Magazine she still wants to see her daughter’s killer dead because she has never apologized.

“She has no remorse. She’s never had any remorse in 31 years,” May said.

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