Execution Halted

Christa Pike survived two lethal injections late Wednesday night, and Tennessee has now called off every execution left on its 2026 calendar, Governor Bill Lee said. A rare and stunning outcome. At Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital. She did not die, BBC News reported. Afterward, hospital staff took her in. Her condition remains unknown, NBC News reported.

Pike, 50, was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate she tortured and killed with her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, according to NBC News. Shipp was a juvenile at the time of the killing. He received a life sentence and remains eligible for parole. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.

Lee called the failed execution one of the state's "most serious responsibilities" and said he was "highly disappointed," BBC News reported. He ordered an independent review. Thursday, he told reporters the investigation "will be thorough" and "it's going to take time." "There are a lot of questions," Lee said, according to ABC News. "The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered."

Tennessee's Department of Correction said it "followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general's office," BBC News reported. Officials added that the protocol doesn't allow for anything beyond what was carried out. Tennessee's attorney general's office told BBC News it agreed with the call for an investigation. "We need to know what happened," the office said.

Pike's attorneys, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement reported by ABC News that the state "once again failed to carry out a lawful execution." They pointed to difficult vein access, blown veins, and what they called degraded pentobarbital. No emergency medical care was available when the injections failed, the attorneys said.

Witnesses heard Pike breathing and snoring loudly after the drugs were given, ABC News reported. Tori Gessner, a WKRN reporter who has witnessed five Tennessee executions, told ABC News that nothing about Wednesday's was typical.

Hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution, voting 6-3 to lift a federal appeals court's stay, according to ABC News. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

It's the second botched execution in Tennessee this year. Tony Carruthers was spared in May after staff couldn't find a usable vein, BBC News reported.

The pause overlaps December 3, the execution date set for Gary Sutton. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn, running for governor, called the outcome tragic and said Tennessee should bring back the electric chair, BBC News reported. Her Democratic rival, Jerri Green, said she'd impose a moratorium on executions if elected.

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, traveled to Nashville to witness the execution. Afterward, she told NBC News, "It was a mess."