NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christa Pike remained alive and in critical condition Thursday after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, as her attorneys said the state subjected her to an ordeal they had specifically warned courts could occur because of her medical problems and difficulties obtaining intravenous access.
Pike’s attorneys said during a Thursday press conference that she was receiving life-saving medical treatment but that they had not been permitted to see her and did not know her prognosis.
“What we have been told is that she is in, she’s in critical condition,” attorney Randy Spivey said. “receiving life-saving care. That, that is the extent that we have at the moment.”
The disclosure came after Tennessee officials attempted Wednesday night to execute the 50-year-old Pike with pentobarbital. Pike remained alive after what her attorneys said were two administrations of the drug and was eventually transported by ambulance to a hospital.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said after the failed execution that it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” adding that the protocol did not authorize additional procedures beyond those already performed.
Gov. Bill Lee subsequently halted Tennessee’s remaining scheduled execution for 2026 and ordered what he described as a comprehensive third-party review of what occurred.
Pike’s attorneys said Thursday that a review is insufficient and called on Lee to commute her death sentence.
“Christa is alive right now. We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” Spivey said. “But we do know that that she is is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care.”
“The state of Tennessee has shown us again that they are not capable of carrying out an execution consistent with basic human dignity,” he added.
Spivey, who witnessed the execution attempt, said what occurred was not an unforeseen complication.
“Last night was not just inefficient, it was cruel, and it was torturous. It was also predictable,” Spivey said. “Christa’s legal team told the state of Tennessee and the courts that her medical conditions would cause her to suffer an agonizing death.”
According to Spivey, the execution team spent approximately an hour attempting to establish intravenous lines.
“I counted at least 7 needles used in her left arm alone, one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm after an unsuccessful attempt,” he said.
Attorney Steve Kissinger said Pike and her lawyers had raised the problem months before the execution.
Kissinger said Pike had experienced difficulty with blood draws throughout her life and had a blood disorder that her attorneys believed would make establishing an IV line particularly difficult.
“We knew this was coming,” Kissinger said. “So back in January, we asked that this problem be addressed in a way that would not lead to the torture that happened last night.”
Kissinger said medical experts testified about Pike’s condition before a special master appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
“Our medical experts gave that testimony to the Special Master, who rejected all of our arguments,” he said.
Despite the difficulties, Spivey said Pike remained cooperative and attempted to help members of the execution team find a usable vein.
“over and over again said, please try up on my shoulder higher, please try here, please try here, I think it will be okay,” Spivey said. “And she thanked them when they were… when they were able to, at least when they thought they had established a line.”
“Ms. Pike was kind, and she was cooperative, and she was at peace the whole time,” he added. “As Steve said, she did not want a stay, she was at peace, and she was ready.”
The attorneys said they do not yet know whether the pentobarbital entered Pike’s bloodstream as intended.
Spivey said he observed Pike’s right arm turning purple, particularly after the second administration of chemicals.
“I’m not a doctor. I don’t really know what that means,” Spivey said. “It is our understanding that there are some blistering and burning around the sites of the injection right now on her, but, like, what that means, I don’t want to guess about what that means. I would much rather a doctor speak to that.”
Questions also remain about what happened after officials closed the curtain separating Pike from media witnesses and her attorney.
Spivey said Pike was still breathing after the second administration of chemicals and a five-minute waiting period.
“The curtains were closed, and Ms. Pike’s spiritual advisor had been removed from her side at this point, and no one knew what was going on behind that curtain,” Spivey said.
Spivey said it took approximately seven minutes and passage through six locked doors before he could reach a telephone and alert Pike’s other attorneys at approximately 8:22 p.m., about 40 minutes after the first administration of chemicals.
He said he then demanded that the execution be stopped and that Pike receive life-saving treatment.
“I did not get any information or confirmation that an ambulance was on its way until 8.50,” Spivey said. “I had no idea when and if medical professionals began to assist Christa.”
Spivey said he did not witness anyone providing life-saving treatment inside the execution chamber, but stressed that he could not see what occurred after officials closed the curtain.
“between 8.25 and essentially 8.50, when we were finally told that the ambulance was on its way. I have no idea what happened in that room,” he said.
Media witnesses similarly reported that Pike continued breathing and making sounds after the curtain was closed and that much of what occurred afterward was hidden from their view.
Kissinger said the communication problems were also foreseeable because attorneys had raised concerns about telephone access following Tennessee’s unsuccessful May execution attempt involving Tony Carruthers.
“The Tennessee Supreme Court expressed themselves that they were very troubled by the lack of telephone access, but did absolutely nothing to remedy the problem,” Kissinger said.
After Spivey finally contacted the outside legal team, Kissinger said attorneys attempted to contact the governor’s office and then called an emergency number they had been given for the Tennessee Supreme Court.
“And that went to voicemail,” Kissinger said.
The attorneys ultimately filed an emergency motion electronically and emailed the court clerk before receiving a cellphone number they could call.
“delay was constant, and we were only able to access the court after at least 15, 20 minutes,” Kissinger said, noting that he was estimating the time.
Kissinger said the Attorney General’s Office subsequently provided information to the court about an ambulance being called, but Pike’s attorneys were receiving information only indirectly and incrementally.
Eventually, Kissinger said, attorneys learned that medical personnel would be allowed to attempt to save Pike and that she was being transported to the hospital.
Kissinger said Pike’s underlying federal appeal remains pending before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals despite the U.S. Supreme Court having vacated the stay that temporarily prevented Wednesday’s execution.
“Yes, that’s what the only thing that was changed was the vacating of the stay,” Kissinger said. “The case itself remains pending in the Sixth Circuit Circuit Court.”
Pike was 18 when she participated in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. She was convicted and sentenced to death, becoming Tennessee’s only woman on death row.
Her attorneys have argued that her youth and extensive history of childhood sexual abuse and trauma should have been given greater weight and that executing her after decades on death row would violate constitutional protections.
Kissinger said Thursday that Pike’s greatest fear was not death itself, but enduring a prolonged and traumatic execution.
“It was not a fear of dying, it was a fear of a prolonged. Painful. traumatic death,” Kissinger said. “And that’s what happened minus the death.”
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers responded Thursday by renewing its call for an end to capital punishment, describing Pike’s execution attempt as Tennessee’s second botched lethal injection since May.
“Christa’s story lays bare the inhumanity of the death penalty, and of our entire criminal legal system,” NACDL President Missy Owen said. “Christa was only eighteen at the time of the crime – an emerging adult whose brain had not fully matured. She endured years of sexual assault beginning when she was a toddler. Yet she was sentenced to die.”
Owen cited research indicating that more than 90% of incarcerated women have experienced childhood trauma, including sexual abuse.
“In May, Tony Carruthers endured over an hour of injection attempts, groaning in pain as workers stuck him with needles over and over. Now it has happened again,” Owen said. “We are told the death penalty is justice — that the state can answer the taking of a life by taking another, quietly and cleanly, in all of our names. A restrained human being pierced again and again while the state searches for a vein is what that promise actually looks like.”
NACDL President-elect Stephen Ross Johnson, a past president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the failed executions demonstrated broader problems with lethal injection.
“Experienced medical professionals most often do not feel they can ethically and morally participate in the state-sanctioned killing of another human being,” Johnson said. “That refusal is itself a moral verdict: the people trained to preserve life will not lend their hands to ending one.”
NACDL Executive Director Lisa Wayne said the problems should not be regarded simply as technical failures.
“The repeated failures are not technical malfunctions,” Wayne said. “They expose a deeper moral truth: a government that sets out to take a life in order to answer the taking of a life cannot do so without inflicting the very cruelty the Constitution forbids.”
“There is no humane way to kill a person who is already strapped down and helpless,” Wayne added. “A botched execution only pulls back the curtain.”
NACDL said it would continue its education programs and resource-sharing supporting capital defense attorneys.
Lee has said the people of Tennessee deserve answers about what happened and ordered a third-party investigation while stopping further executions this year. The Tennessee Department of Correction, however, has maintained that its personnel followed the state’s established execution protocol.
Pike’s attorneys said another investigation is not enough.
They are asking Lee to commute her sentence rather than permit Tennessee to attempt to execute her again.
“The governor must commute Christa’s sentence now,” Spivey said.
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