Christa Pike, 50, was due to be executed by lethal injection on September 30 at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee, where she would have been the first woman put to death by the state in more than 200 years. Instead the procedure went badly wrong: staff made repeated attempts to establish intravenous access and she was given two doses of the drug pentobarbital, but she did not die. She was left critically ill and taken for hospital treatment.
Her lawyer Stephen Ferrell has since updated the BBC on her recovery. Pike has begun walking around her hospital room, though she cannot yet go far, and her arms remain badly injured with only limited use. There are also worries about her thinking: she is generally aware of her surroundings but can become confused, lose her train of thought and forget what she is doing, and lasting damage cannot yet be ruled out. She has no memory of the attempted execution itself, and earlier reports mentioned pneumonia and a blood clot during her treatment.
Pike has spent more than three decades on death row for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a college classmate, when Pike herself was 18. The case is described as one of Tennessee’s most notorious murders, and the difference in sentences has drawn comment: her co-defendant received a prison term with the possibility of parole, while Pike was sentenced to death.
Her lawyers are now seeking to have the sentence commuted to life imprisonment without parole, pointing to her age at the time of the offence, her reported bipolar disorder and her history of sexual abuse. Governor Bill Lee has ordered a review of the failed execution and paused all executions in the state for the rest of 2026, while politician Marsha Blackburn has publicly raised restoring the electric chair — an option being discussed, not a confirmed plan for Pike. Whether the state will try again, and by what method, remains unresolved.
