By now the story of Christa Pike’s survival has been told many times: the failed execution, her first words after waking, her return to prison. If you’re wondering what's next, I'm here to answer that question.
Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman Tennessee had executed in more than two centuries. On Sept. 30, about an hour before the scheduled time, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to stay the execution so it could consider whether her history of childhood sexual abuse had been weighed at sentencing. The U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay that same day without explanation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, writing that the order “unnecessarily prevents” the appeals court from hearing her claim.
Her attorney said staff needed more than an hour and at least seven needles to place an IV. Once the pentobarbital began, Pike told the room, “The vein in my arm feels like it's about to bust.” Her lawyers say a second dose followed. She left the prison by ambulance in critical condition, and her lawyers later described her arms as burned and blistered. By Oct. 5, they said, she was considered brain-dead. The next day she woke up andwoke and asked, according to her attorney, “Where am I and who are you?” She was, he said, “very aware that the state tried to execute” her. On Oct. 10 she was discharged and returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville.
Tennessee has not said whether it will try again. Gov. Bill Lee ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review” and called off the state's remaining executions for 2026. Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada resigned Oct. 3. The Department of Correction says it “followed every step” of its protocol, which, the Associated Press reported, does not address a prisoner who survives the second set of drugs. On Oct. 7, Davidson County Judge I'Ashea Myles ordered the state to preserve evidence of the attempt. Pike's attorney Luke Ihnen told the court, “The state has made no promises that Ms. Pike will not be subject to a future execution.”
If the state moves forward, it will be leaning on a 1947 decision. That year the Supreme Court allowed Louisiana to execute Willie Francis, a Black teenager, after the electric chair failed to kill him the year before. Experts told the AP they know of no statute that bars a second attempt. Jordan Steiker of the University of Texas noted, though, that earlier retries followed attempts in which no drug reached the prisoner, while Pike "bore the brunt of lethal drugs." Attorney John Mills said the question would be whether another attempt amounts to torture under the Eighth Amendment. Alabama prisoners Kenneth Smith and Alan Miller raised that argument after failed executions in 2022. The Supreme Court did not take it up, and both were executed in 2024.
Two other paths could keep the case open for years. Pike's lawyers expect medical and psychiatric evaluations to test whether she is competent to be executed. They have also asked Lee, who denied her clemency on Sept. 28, to commute her sentence to life without parole, which Steiker called the clearest way to avoid prolonged litigation.
None of this changes what happened in 1995. Pike, then 18, killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate at a Knoxville job-training center, and she does not deny it. Slemmer's mother has said she wants the sentence carried out. Tennessee's attorney general has argued the years of delay have traumatized the family.
For now, Pike is back in her Nashville cell with no new date set, and the next move belongs to the governor.