{"id":1990,"date":"2026-10-01T14:03:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T09:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=1990"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:03:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T09:03:45","slug":"tennessee-death-row-inmate-christa-pike-survives-execution-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=1990","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survives execution attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee\u2019s effort to execute her by means of lethal \u200binjection late on Wednesday, prison officials said, foiling the state\u2019s first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pike\u2019s condition following the ordeal was \u200cnot immediately known, and it was not clear what legal avenues her lawyers or the state might pursue next after she was taken for medical treatment from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.<\/p>\n

The Tennessee Department of Correction defended its handling of the high-profile execution, which had been opposed by her lawyers and human rights experts due to Pike\u2019s age at the time of the crime, her history as the victim of \u200bchildhood sexual abuse and untreated mental illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the state\u2019s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General\u2019s Office,\u201d the \u200bagency said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures \u2060beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility,\u201d the statement concluded.<\/p>\n

Pike\u2019s lawyers filed a federal court motion during the process seeking \u200bto halt her execution, citing witnesses\u2019 accounts that \u201cexecutioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring,\u201d NBC News reported.<\/p>\n

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who denied Pike\u2019s \u200bclemency petition on Monday, issued a statement after the botched execution, suspending all executions this year and calling for a \u201ccomprehensive, third-party review\u201d of Pike\u2019s execution attempt, according to the Nashville Tennessean.<\/p>\n

The failed execution is the second in Tennessee this year, after prison officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man<\/a> convicted of murders after failing to find a suitable vein for his lethal injection.<\/p>\n

The botched attempt on Wednesday came hours after the \u200bUS Supreme Court lifted an 11th-hour lower-court stay of the execution, clearing the way for Pike, 50, to be put to death for her role in the 1995 torture and beating \u200bdeath of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.<\/p>\n

Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she, 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and a third companion lured Slemmer, a classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational centre, into a \u200cwooded area where \u2060they tortured and killed her.<\/p>\n

The grisly nature of the slaying, which involved the perpetrators carving the shape of a pentagram in the victim\u2019s chest and taking a chunk of her skull as a souvenir of the carnage, drew intense media coverage at the time.<\/p>\n

Pike and Shipp confessed to the killing, and both were convicted of first-degree murder.<\/p>\n

Slemmer\u2019s mother, May Martinez, has spoken out in support of the execution.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Ambulance called<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Journalists who witnessed the attempted execution described snoring, loud exhales, gasps and complaints from Pike about discomfort in her arm.<\/p>\n

At times, the curtain was closed, and \u200bjournalists could only hear sounds.<\/p>\n

Clergy were called into \u200bthe chamber twice, they said, before an \u2060ambulance was seen arriving at the prison and then leaving.<\/p>\n

Aside from being the first woman the state of Tennessee has tried to execute in more than 200 years, Pike was also poised to become the only person in the modern era of US capital punishment to be \u200bexecuted in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.<\/p>\n

In a 226-page petition asking the governor to commute Pike\u2019s death penalty to \u200ba life sentence without the \u2060possibility of parole, her lawyers earlier this week documented her history as the childhood victim of violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17.<\/p>\n

They also cited diagnoses she received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n

Moreover, her lawyers pointed to evidence that Pike\u2019s mother drank heavily during pregnancy, contributing to faulty brain development that made it difficult for their \u2060client to control \u200bher impulses as a young person.<\/p>\n

Pike was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in an \u200bassault on another inmate, according to the Correction Department.<\/p>\n

Executions of female prison inmates are exceedingly rare in the US, with women accounting for just 18 of the 1,683 people put to death since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to \u200bresume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.<\/p>\n

Before Wednesday, Tennessee had executed 17 people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee\u2019s effort to execute her by means of lethal \u200binjection late on Wednesday, prison officials said, foiling the state\u2019s first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries. Pike\u2019s condition following the ordeal was \u200cnot immediately known, and it was not clear what legal avenues her lawyers or the state might pursue next after she was taken for medical treatment from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Tennessee Department of Correction defended its handling of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}