Tennessee has halted further executions this year while officials investigate why two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill Christa Pike.
NASHVILLE, TN — Christa Pike remained alive Thursday after Tennessee failed to execute her by lethal injection, an extraordinary outcome that sent the 50-year-old death row prisoner to a hospital and prompted Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining execution for 2026.
Pike’s survival does not automatically overturn her death sentence. Tennessee law provides that when a person sentenced to death is not executed, the sentence remains in force. But there is no new execution date, and Lee has ordered a comprehensive third-party review of what happened. Any effort to carry out the sentence again could also bring new legal challenges over whether another attempt would violate Pike’s constitutional rights.
The Tennessee Department of Correction attempted to execute Pike on Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Officials administered the state’s lethal-injection drug, pentobarbital, and then used the backup dose provided for under the protocol. Pike remained alive after both doses. More than an hour into the procedure, witnesses could still hear her breathing and snoring. She was later transported to an off-site medical facility.
One of Pike’s lawyers said Thursday that she was alive and receiving medical care, but her legal team did not know her prognosis. State officials had not publicly explained why the drug failed to cause her death. The Department of Correction said its staff followed every step of the state’s established execution protocol and said the protocol did not permit additional procedures after the steps used Wednesday night.
Lee called the failed execution “deeply disturbing” and ordered an outside review. He also indefinitely postponed Pike’s execution and the only other Tennessee execution that had been scheduled for the remainder of 2026. The review is expected to focus attention on the state’s lethal-injection procedures and why the protocol failed to produce the intended result even after the backup dose was administered.
The legal question of what happens to Pike’s sentence is separate from the investigation into the failed procedure. Tennessee Code states that if an inmate sentenced to death is not executed, “from any cause,” the death sentence remains in force. That means Wednesday’s failed attempt did not by itself convert Pike’s punishment to a life sentence or otherwise erase the judgment against her. A future execution would require further action to establish when the sentence could be carried out.
Pike’s lawyers are expected to fight any attempt to execute her again. After Wednesday’s procedure, her attorneys described what happened as torture and called for her death sentence to be commuted. The unusual circumstances could produce litigation under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, particularly because Pike received the drugs intended to carry out the execution rather than having the procedure stopped before they were administered.
There is precedent for a state attempting an execution again after an earlier attempt failed, although Pike’s circumstances are unusual. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Louisiana to make a second attempt to execute Willie Francis after he survived a malfunctioning electric chair in 1946. More recently, Alabama abandoned a 2022 lethal-injection attempt involving Kenneth Eugene Smith after officials had difficulty establishing intravenous access. Alabama later executed Smith in 2024 using nitrogen hypoxia. Pike’s case differs because Tennessee officials administered both the initial and backup doses of pentobarbital and she survived.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time of the crime and was convicted the following year. She had been the only woman on Tennessee’s death row and would have been the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years. Her lawyers had sought to stop the execution, and a federal appeals court issued a stay shortly before it was initially scheduled to occur Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court later allowed the execution to proceed.
For now, the immediate questions are medical, investigative and legal. Pike remains under medical care, while Tennessee has not announced another execution date. The state’s third-party review must determine what went wrong before officials decide how to proceed, and any renewed effort to carry out Pike’s death sentence could return the case to court.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 1, 2026.