Updated Oct. 1, 2026, 9:36 p.m. ET
For well over an hour, the state of Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike. Then they raced to save her life.
Seven members of the news media who witnessed Pike’s botched execution on Sept. 30 described an increasingly troublesome scene in the death chamber at a state prison in Nashville. The process began with Pike’s last words, and ended with the state closing curtains in the viewing chamber and ordering the witnesses to leave even as they could hear Pike snoring on what was supposed to be her death bed.
Pike had survived two doses of pentobarbital, the second of which is considered a backup in case the first doesn’t prove lethal. The state’s execution protocol has no guidance for what happens when two doses fail, something that hasn’t happened in the history of lethal injections in the U.S., according to experts and a USA TODAY review of previous botched executions.
Pike’s failed execution, Tennessee’s second in just four months, is raising questions about the state’s ability to carry out the death penalty and drawing increased scrutiny to the constitutionality of the method nationwide.
As questions swirl about what happened to Pike and what is next to come, USA TODAY has compiled a timeline of chaos in the death chamber:
Curtains open, last words: 7:26 p.m. PT
At 7:26 p.m. CT, media witnesses say that prison officials opened the curtains to the death chamber at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike was strapped down to the execution gurney, an IV line had been inserted into her right arm, and her spiritual adviser was by her side, reported Will Puckett of WVLT-TV.
Warden Kenneth Nelsen asked Pike if she had any last words before her lethal injection.
“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is with love,” Pike said, according to Damon Lawrence, a reporter with Roane County News. “She said she loves the people who are angry with her just as much as she loves the people who are on her side. She said, ‘I’m at peace and I’m ready to go.'”
Pike also said she was “ready to be free” and that “this is a happy day,” Associated Press reporter Kim Chandler said.
‘My arm feels like it’s about to burst open’: 7:34 p.m. CT
Witnesses did not share the exact moment Pike began receiving the first dose of pentobarbital but they may not have known when that was. At some point it became clear that Pike was reacting to the drug, they reported.
“My arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” Pike said at 7:34 p.m. CT, according to WKRN journalist and Tori Gessner.
“I saw a tear roll down her right eye and then she said, ‘One spot is really throbbing,'” Puckett said.
Three minutes later, Puckett said Pike “took four separate significant breaths large enough to where you could see her body rising at points, sort of on and off the gurney.”
At 7:39 p.m., he said, Pike lifted her head and looked at the IV in her arm.
“I do want to note that almost the entire time she was kicking her feet so often that she was actually knocking the sheet that laid over her off,” he said, adding that a corrections employee had to put it back on her. “Her jaws were moving at 7:43. At 7:44 she took a deep breath, said something I couldn’t hear. At 7:45 she took a very large yawn.”
Gessner said: “We all looked at each other like, ‘She’s still alive.'”
State closes curtains on execution: 7:46 p.m. CT
With Pike still alive and “clearly snoring” at 7:46 p.m. CT, the state closed the curtains between the execution chamber and the witness room, the reporters said.
They were closed for about three minutes, presumably to administer the second dose of pentobarbital, Chandler of AP reported.
When they opened again at 7:49 p.m.: “She was snoring very loudly at that point − mouth open snoring,” Gessner said.
Puckett said he saw Pike’s lip quiver and that at 7:51, it sounded “like she was almost choking.”
“At 7:54 she let out a loud grunt, lifted her head up, her mouth opened, the snoring then began again,” he said. “Just before 7:56 her body lifted off the gurney again, both her head and her legs sort of like in a V-shape almost.”
He said Pike let out a heavy sigh at 8:01 p.m. and that four minutes later at 8:05 p.m., “her body flexed as she gasped for air.”
That’s when “the curtain was abruptly drawn the second time.”
Curtains go back down for good: 8:05 p.m. CT
Prison officials lowered the curtains again at 8:05 p.m. CT, witnesses said. They kept them down for nearly 50 minutes as the witnesses sat confused and hearing Pike’s snores and breaths.
“We could not see what was happening,” reported John North, an investigative reported at WBIR-TV. “We heard activity but we don’t know what happened. We’re not sure that’s appropriate and that’s a question we’d like answered.”
At 8:53 p.m., Puckett said the microphone in the death chamber was cut off and that Warden Nelson said: “Will the witnesses please exit the area.”
As the witnesses were describing what they experienced to other members of the news media outside the prison, emergency vehicles arrived. One of them took Pike to a hospital to get medical care, according to the Tennessee Supreme Court, citing the state.
Pike is in critical condition, attorneys say
The state of Tennessee had released no information about Pike’s medical condition as of 5:30 p.m. CT, nearly 21 hours after the state ordered witnesses out of the death chamber. USA TODAY sent urgent messages to representatives at Gov. Bill Lee’s office and the Department of Corrections both on the night of the botched execution and on Thursday, Oct. 1, and has received no response.
But Pike’s attorneys said that she was still alive, in critical condition and “receiving lifesaving medical care” as of Thursday afternoon.
“Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty,” Randy Spivey, one of Pike’s attorneys, said during a news conference. He called on Lee to commute Pike’s death sentence immediately.
“The incompetence of the Tennessee DOC sets the bar at the lowest level,” Abraham Bonowitz, co-founder of Death Penalty Action, said in a statement. “There are no other words. This is an outrage. How do they sleep at night?”
The night of the botched execution, the reporters who witnessed the debacle were beginning to observe just how unusual the events of the day were.
“None of it was normal,” Catherine Sweeney of WPLN-TV told reporters afterward. “I covered all the executions last year and most of the ones this year. We haven’t seen anything like it.”
Puckett said that “from the get-go, this seemed very out of sorts.” And Gessner: “Nothing about today was normal.”
Lee talked to reporters on Thursday morning after he spoke at the grand opening of an education center and helped cut a giant blue ribbon to a round of applause.
Lee said he did not know what Pike’s condition was but said he was “highly disappointed” and called the botched execution a tragedy.
“There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen,” he said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
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