Christa Pike has been discharged from the hospital and returned to prison, 10 days after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection.
Her attorneys announced Saturday (Oct. 10) that Pike, 50, is back at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, the women’s prison where she has been held for more than 30 years. “She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” her legal team said. The statement came from Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen of Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, along with Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason of the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender.
Tennessee has not said whether it will try to execute her again.
Christa Pike was strapped to the gurney on the evening of Sept. 30 and given pentobarbital, a powerful sedative the state uses as its only execution drug. When the first dose did not kill her, a second followed. She stopped responding but kept breathing. Witnesses described her snoring, and she was still snoring when the microphone in the execution chamber was cut off more than an hour into the procedure. She was then rushed by ambulance to a hospital.
In a court filing, her lawyers said Christa Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator in the hours that followed while hospital staff worked to clear the drug from her body. Early the next week, she was believed to be brain dead. Then on Tuesday, Oct. 6, she woke up and started talking. Spivey said her first words were “Where am I, and who are you?” He said she understood the state had tried to kill her and was angry and confused. By Thursday, she was taking limited steps.
The injuries go beyond what the drug did internally. Her attorneys wrote that both of her arms were “swollen, burned, and blistered” when she arrived at the hospital. They believe problems with her IV lines sent the pentobarbital into the tissue of her arms instead of her bloodstream, and they described the drug as caustic enough to burn on contact. During the execution, Pike reportedly asked prison staff whether her arm was supposed to feel that way and said it felt like it was going to burst.
Her lawyers say her physical recovery has been remarkable, but she is still struggling with memory problems. They say it could take months to know whether the ordeal left lasting brain damage.
Nothing like this has happened before. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called what Christa Pike went through “singular and unparalleled,” because she survived long enough to be taken to a hospital. Spivey put it more bluntly. “Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty,” he said.
The fallout reached the top of the state government. Gov. Bill Lee called the failed execution “deeply disturbing,” ordered an independent review, and indefinitely postponed both Pike’s execution and that of Gary Wayne Sutton, the only other execution Tennessee had scheduled this year. Days later, Lee announced that Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, would resign. Strada said stepping down was “in the best interest of Tennesseans” while the review plays out. Pike’s legal team called the resignation justified but said it “does nothing to help Christa now.”
On Oct. 7, Judge I’Ashea Myles of the Davidson County Chancery Court ordered prison officials to preserve all evidence tied to the execution attempt, including messages. Her attorneys have also asked Lee to commute her sentence, which would replace the death sentence with life in prison.
Tennessee’s execution system has broken down before. In 2022, the state abruptly called off the execution of Oscar Smith after admitting it had not properly tested its lethal injection drugs. That led to a pause in executions and eventually to the current pentobarbital only protocol. Before Sept. 30, Pike’s lawyers warned about her difficult vein access, the risk of degraded drugs, and the lack of emergency medical care in the chamber. After the attempt failed, they said those concerns “proved to be true.”
Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, a classmate she and her boyfriend tortured and killed in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time. She is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, and her execution would have been the first of a woman in the state in more than 200 years. She has expressed remorse for Slemmer’s death.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, drove from Florida to Nashville to witness the execution. Afterward, she told NBC News, “It was a mess.”