Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has called off the execution of a murderer after she inexplicably survived two rounds of lethal injections.
Christa Pike, who savagely murdered a teenage co-worker decades ago, was still breathing nearly an hour after she was administered drugs that should have killed her. This prompted Lee to not only postpone her execution but also postpone scheduled state killings for the rest of the year.
Lee, a MAGA politician who has traveled to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, said he was ordering a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
Lee conceded that the botched execution is a bad look.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” he said in a statement.
Anti-death penalty advocates have slammed the process, noting that media observers described a harrowing scene from the chamber. Pike could still be heard snoring and breathing loudly when witnesses were ordered out of the room.
“It appeared this did not go as it was supposed to go,” said John North, a reporter at TV station WBIR who was a witness to the botched execution.
He added, “When we left the building, we did not know if she was still alive.”
Pike, now 50, murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer with the help of two other teens in Knoxville in 1995. She says she beat and slashed Slemmer, who had a pentagram carved into her chest with a box cutter. Pike admitted to hitting Slemmer in the head with asphalt, slitting her throat, and even keeping a piece of Slemmer’s skull afterward. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend.
Once behind bars, Pike was convicted of attempting to murder fellow inmate Patricia Jones by strangling her with a shoestring in 2001.
In a push for clemency, Pike’s legal team said in a 226-page petition that she had a childhood marked by neglect and sexual abuse. The Tennessee Supreme Court denied her motion to stay her execution last week. On Monday, Lee rejected Pike’s clemency request and refused to intervene. The U.S. Supreme Court also denied her appeal on Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned a 6th Circuit ruling that had temporarily halted the execution at the 11th hour.
Had Pike’s execution been succseful, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
The botched execution is the second to roil Tennessee this year. In May, the lethal injection of convicted murderer Tony Carruthers—at the same Nashville prison—also failed, and Lee granted the killer a one-year reprieve.
In the wake of the failed execution, more than 40 doctors and nurses sent a letter to Lee asking him to halt executions—or at least do more to ensure that they are carried out correctly.
“If Tennessee is going to continue executing prisoners, it must find a way to do so that does not inflict severe pain and suffering on the person being executed and does not require the involvement of medical professionals contrary to their ethical obligations,” they wrote.
