Editor’s note: This article has been updated throughout.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted executions for the year after the state botched its planned execution of Christa Pike, the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row, late Wednesday night. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in over 200 years.
Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital, the drug used for the lethal injection, The New York Times reports from Nashville. Her lawyers said in emergency legal filings that after two syringes of lethal drugs were administered, Pike did not lose consciousness and still had a heartbeat, and that she described a burning pain in her arm. She has since been hospitalized and her attorneys said on Thursday afternoon that she is in critical condition, per the Times. She is 50 years old.
The execution had initially been delayed by appeals. A federal appeals court halted proceedings on Wednesday morning, but then the U.S. Supreme Court gave the greenlight, with the three liberal justices dissenting. Tennessee then hurried to go through with the execution before it would need to be rescheduled after the extended delay.
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In 1995, Pike and her boyfriend tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike took a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir. She was 18 at the time. She has not denied her actions, but her attorneys say that crucial context was missing from the original trial: namely, Pike’s abusive childhood, which included allegations of child sexual abuse. Her boyfriend, who was 17 at the time of Slemmer’s killing, got life in prison.
Women’s advocacy groups protested Pike’s planned execution on the grounds that the procedure would force her to relive her trauma. Court documents obtained by USA Today show that Pike was sexually assaulted by her grandmother’s boyfriend before she entered kindergarten and that she was raped as a child on several occasions, once by a neighbor.
This is Tennessee’s second failed execution attempt this year. In May, the planned execution of Tony Carruthers failed after medical personnel failed to establish an intravenous line, as well as other steps mandated in state protocol. His attorneys said that he was punctured over a dozen times as the medical team tried to find a vein. Carruthers later suffered a stroke and partial paralysis, according to a complaint his sister filed to the Tennessee Department of Health.
In response to the botched execution of Pike, the governor said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement that it “had followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office.”
Prior to Pike’s planned execution, her attorneys had raised concerns that the procedure would be torturous for her due to her small veins, medical conditions and history of sexual trauma.
Executions of women are exceedingly rare, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Only 18 women have been executed since 1976, with the greatest number in Texas. Amber McLaughlin was the last woman to be killed by lethal injection in 2023 in Missouri.
Only one other execution was scheduled for this year in Tennessee. It is now halted after the governor’s order.
