Christa Pike remains unconscious on a ventilator two days after a failed execution. Her attorneys are now seeking commutation.
Christa Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator in a Nashville-area hospital two days after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday, as her legal team pressed the state to commute her sentence rather than attempt a third execution. Pike, 50, was described by her lawyers as “critically ill” and being treated for significant injuries to both arms caused by the pentobarbital administered during Wednesday night’s execution attempt.
According to the filing, the Tennessee Department of Correction’s IV team used at least seven needles while attempting to establish access during the execution, and Pike at one point offered the team guidance on a potential injection site. Her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen of the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, filed an emergency motion Friday in Davidson County Chancery Court seeking an order requiring the state to preserve all evidence related to the execution attempt, and have requested an expedited hearing. Randy Spivey, an attorney with the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender, said the state had again shown it could not carry out an execution “consistent with basic human dignity,” and called on Gov. Bill Lee to commute Pike’s sentence immediately, citing more than two decades she has spent as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, conditions her legal team has likened to solitary confinement.
Lee, who paused all of Tennessee’s remaining 2026 executions and ordered an independent review following Wednesday’s failed attempt, has not announced any decision on commutation. Pike’s attorneys said Thursday that the governor’s review does not go far enough, and noted that the complications during Wednesday’s attempt were ones they had warned the state and courts about months in advance. The Tennessee Department of Correction has said it followed its execution protocol throughout the attempt. Robert Bracewell, executive director of the Justice Coalition, which has supported the family of victim Colleen Slemmer through the process, told CNN the state had not informed the family what happens next, leaving them frustrated with what he described as a lack of communication from officials.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 torture killing of Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job training program; she was 18 at the time of the crime. Her attorneys have cited childhood physical and sexual abuse and neglect, along with a documented blood disorder, in prior court filings arguing that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol posed an unconstitutional risk to her.
This report is based on information from CNN, ABC News, CBS News and WKRN.