Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row prisoner who survived a lethal injection attempt on September 30, said in her first public statement on Friday, October 30, that she has been in pain every moment since and does not know what comes next.
"There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," Pike said in the statement, released exactly one month after the attempt, according to CBS News. "I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next." She added, "I am searching for meaning in what happened to me."
Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee's death row. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate at the Knoxville Job Corps. Pike was 18. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, received life with the possibility of parole, the Associated Press reported.
Where her case stands
Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions in Tennessee through the end of 2026, canceled the execution that had been set for December 3 and ordered a third party review of what happened. Asked about Pike on Wednesday, Lee said, "I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts," CBS News reported.
A court granted Pike's request on October 7 to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution. A follow up hearing set for October 23 was canceled while the judge considers several motions, and no new execution date has been reported. Her attorney Stephen Ferrell of Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee has asked the governor to commute her sentence, saying the minimum step would be to "take death off the table." Another of her lawyers, Randy Spivey, has said she suffered punishment "greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty," the AP reported.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has said it "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol." Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the case "singular and unparalleled" and said Pike is the only person known to have remained alive after lethal injection drugs were administered in an execution.
Our timeline of September 30
This sequence is compiled from media witness accounts collected by WSMV. All times are Central.
About 9 a.m.: The Sixth Circuit issued a temporary stay.
5:50 p.m.: The U.S. Supreme Court, voting 6 to 3, allowed the execution to proceed.
7:26 p.m.: Witnesses say the execution began.
7:34 p.m.: Pike said her arm felt like it was about to burst, a WKRN reporter said.
7:41 p.m.: A rock was placed inside the chamber, which witnesses understood as a signal that the pentobarbital was finished. It was placed again at 8:01 p.m. Pike received two doses, CBS News reported.
8:05 p.m.: The curtains closed for the last time. The AP put it at 8:06.
About 9:15 p.m.: Ambulances arrived at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
By our arithmetic, 39 minutes passed between the start of the execution and the final curtain, and about an hour and 49 minutes passed before ambulances arrived. Her lawyers said she later had pneumonia and a blood clot. She was discharged back to prison on October 10.
What changed in Tennessee's protocol
A CBS News review of Tennessee protocols back to 2007 found that the version in use before 2025 ran over 100 pages, while the one released early last year is 44 pages. The 2025 version describes the IV team's role in one sentence and dropped a monthly training requirement to practice IV placement on a volunteer. Kit Thomas of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Nashville told CBS, "When there are fewer rules, there are just fewer ways for you to be penalized." Pike's attempt was Tennessee's second failure this year. In May, the state stopped Tony Carruthers's execution after more than an hour of failed IV attempts.
Can the state try again?
The closest Supreme Court precedent is 79 years old. In Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, decided January 13, 1947, Willie Francis had survived Louisiana's electric chair on May 3, 1946. By a 5 to 4 vote, the Court let the state try again. The plurality wrote that "accidents happen for which no man is to blame" and found no double jeopardy or cruel and unusual punishment violation. Justice Harold Burton's dissent warned that "taking human life by unnecessarily cruel means shocks the most fundamental instincts of civilized man."
The modern test came in Ohio. After executioners spent about two hours failing to keep an IV line in Romell Broom on September 15, 2009, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the state could try again, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal that December. Broom died in 2020 before a second attempt, according to his case history.
Our read: Pike's case sits closer to Francis than to Broom, because the drug was actually given, twice. Whether a 1947 plurality still controls under today's Eighth Amendment cases is a question courts may have to answer if Tennessee ever sets a new date. For how clemency fights play out in other states this fall, see our coverage of the Indiana parole board's recommendation on Jeffrey Weisheit and of Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuting Toforest Johnson's death sentence.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
