Tennessee Governor Orders Probe After Pike Execution Fails

TL;DR: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a full third-party review after the State failed to execute Christa Pike despite giving her both sets of lethal injection drugs allowed under State protocol. Pike remained alive and was taken to a hospital. Lee also stopped Tennessee’s remaining execution scheduled for 2026.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered a broad outside review after the State failed to execute convicted murderer Christa Gail Pike Wednesday night despite administering two rounds of lethal injection drugs.

Pike, 50, remained alive after receiving both sets of pentobarbital syringes authorized under Tennessee's execution rules, according to reports from the Associated Press and USA Today. She was later taken from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville to an outside medical facility.

The extraordinary failure prompted Lee to order what he called a “comprehensive, third-party review” to find out what happened. Lee also said Tennessee's remaining execution scheduled for this year will not go forward.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities,” Lee said, adding that Tennesseans expect the process to be lawful, constitutional and effective, according to ITV News.

The failure raises stark questions about Tennessee's lethal injection system because, according to the State itself, the execution team followed the approved rules.

In an unusual late-night Statement, the Tennessee Department of Correction said it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.” The agency added that the lethal injection drug had been effective in the past and that its protocol did not permit any further procedure after the steps used Wednesday night.

In short, the State says its execution team followed the rules — and the rules failed to produce an execution.

Under the protocol, officials administer pentobarbital through a primary set of syringes. If the inmate is still alive after the required waiting period, a backup set is used. But the rules do not spell out another execution step if the inmate remains alive after the second set.

That is apparently what happened Wednesday.

Pike's attorneys said she was given both sets of lethal drugs but remained alive and breathing. Witness accounts described Pike making breathing or snoring sounds well after the drugs had been given. The execution was ultimately abandoned, and she was taken for medical care.

The failed execution followed a day of legal whiplash.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially blocked Pike's execution while considering a challenge involving her claims of severe childhood abuse and mental illness. The U.S. Supreme Court later lifted that stay, clearing Tennessee to proceed.

Pike had been sentenced to death for the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Job Corps program in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time. Prosecutors said Slemmer was lured to an isolated area, beaten, cut and killed. Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

Had the execution succeeded, Pike would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years.

The failure also comes only four months after Tennessee was forced to abandon another execution.

On May 21, the State attempted to execute Tony Carruthers. Medical staff established one IV line but could not establish the backup line required by the State's protocol. Attempts to place a central line also failed.

Lee ultimately granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve. In its Statement at the time, the Governor's office confirmed that the execution was called off after the required backup access could not be established.

That means Tennessee has now failed to complete two executions in less than five months — for two very different reasons.

In Carruthers' case, the State could not establish the required IV access. In Pike's case, officials say they successfully carried out every step in the approved lethal injection protocol, including administering the backup drugs, yet she survived.

The Pike case may therefore pose an even deeper problem for the State.

The immediate question is no longer simply whether Tennessee personnel followed the execution protocol. By TDOC's own account, they did.

Lee's third-party investigation will now have to determine why following that protocol did not produce the result it was designed to achieve — and whether Tennessee can safely and lawfully carry out another execution under the current system.