Tennessee’s execution of Christa Pike was halted after a reportedly botched lethal injection. Courts had reversed course twice that day
Tennessee was unable to carry out the execution of Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday, according to media witnesses, after the state administered two rounds of its lethal injection protocol over roughly two hours and Pike reportedly remained alive when witnesses were escorted from the chamber. The execution had been scheduled for 10 a.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, but proceeded hours late after a day of reversals in federal courts.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit halted the execution on a 2-1 vote roughly an hour before it was set to begin, ruling that more time was needed to review whether Pike’s claims of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately presented to the jury before her 1996 death sentence. Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 6-3 that evening to vacate the stay and allow the execution to proceed before the state’s death warrant expired at midnight. The court’s conservative majority did not explain its decision; its three liberal justices dissented, saying Pike’s claims deserved closer examination. Pike’s attorney, Stephen Ferrell of the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, said the appeals court’s earlier stay had reflected “serious concerns” about the case. An anti-death penalty group filed an emergency appeal during the execution itself seeking to halt the process and secure medical care for Pike, according to the Tennessee Lookout.
Pike, 50, was convicted of first-degree murder for the January 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a University of Tennessee classmate. Prosecutors said Pike and her then-boyfriend lured Slemmer to an abandoned steam plant near campus, where she was beaten, tortured and killed. Pike was 18 at the time of the crime and has spent three decades on death row; she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, had declined earlier in the week to grant clemency in the case.
The Tennessee Department of Correction had not issued a formal statement on the outcome of Wednesday’s execution attempt as of Wednesday evening, and it remained unclear what would happen next in the case.
This report is based on information from the Associated Press (via PBS NewsHour), ABC News, Axios Nashville, The Hill and the Tennessee Lookout.