The case gives new arguments to opponents of the death penalty. Christa Pike survived the lethal injection protocol implemented in the state of Tennessee on Wednesday September 30. This failure, unprecedented in the United States, led to the suspension of planned executions in the state.
1 What happened?
Nothing went as planned. Christa Pike continued to breathe and snore audibly after receiving the two injections meant to kill her, according to witnesses to the execution cited by US media. “Several times, she looked around the room. At one point, she asked prison officials if she was supposed to feel like that,” Kim Chandler, an Associated Press reporter present, told CBS News.
“The concerns raised by Ms. Pike turned out to be well-founded: difficulty accessing veins, ruptured veins, degraded pentobarbital, lack of emergency medical care when things inevitably go wrong, all within the framework of a protocol which remains shrouded in secrecy,” denounced the condemned woman's lawyers.
“It’s unprecedented,” Robin Maher, director of the Capital Punishment Information Center, an organization that refers to the United States, told the New York Times. “Of all the botched executions we have seen in modern times, this is the worst.” No details have been given on the state of health of Christa Pike after this botched execution. “Christa is being treated in a hospital near” her prison, her lawyers only said.
2 How are the authorities reacting?
The Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, has suspended the executions still planned this year in this state in the southern United States. He also ordered the opening of an investigation entrusted to a third party.
“The enforcement of a lawfully imposed sentence is one of the most serious responsibilities of the State,” explained Bill Lee in a press release published overnight. “Tennessees expect it to be conducted in a ... effective manner.”
3 Why was Christa Pike sentenced to death?
This 50-year-old woman was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, one of her vocational training classmates. “It took me many years to realize the seriousness of what I had done,” said Christa Pike, who was 18 at the time of the events, in a letter to the state governor, reports TV5 Monde. “But above all, I have to accept the number of lives I have disrupted.”
“I took the life of someone’s child, sister or friend. I’m sick about it today.”
Christine Pike
In a request to the governor
In this case of romantic rivalry, Christa Pike's two accomplices escaped the death penalty. The first, her 17-year-old boyfriend, was sentenced to life in prison. The second, another young woman of 18 years old, received a suspended sentence in exchange for her testimony against the other two.
4 Why is his conviction controversial?
Christa Pike's lawyers claim that her defense during her trial in 1996 did not invoke the mitigating circumstances from which she should have benefited, in particular because of the trauma and violence, particularly sexual, suffered from a young age. Usa Today reports that at the age of 11, "Christa Pike was raped by a neighbor in an attack that caused an infection and preceded a suicide attempt at the age of 12."
“Christa was a child who endured repeated rape, sexual abuse, abandonment and profound trauma. At the time of the crime, she carried the scars of this violence, neglect and untreated mental illness,” her lawyers say. According to them, the American has suffered from bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress caused by this violence since her youth, but was diagnosed late. "When Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1996, the extensive research we have today on adverse childhood experiences and their cumulative effects was not easily accessible. The major study that brought this to light was not published until 1998," Barbara Holden Nixon, a social worker, told the Associated Press.
At the beginning of September, experts mandated by the UN therefore called for the execution of Christa Pike to be suspended and her sentence to be commuted. A request refused on Monday by the governor of Tennessee. An hour before the scheduled time for the execution, an appeals court also wanted to give itself time to decide on the admissibility of a defense appeal, but the Supreme Court of the United States, with a conservative majority, finally authorized the execution on Wednesday, canceling this stay.
5 Where is the death penalty in the United States?
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 American states. Three others (California, Oregon and Pennsylvania) observe a moratorium on executions by decision of their governor. In total, 47 executions took place in the United States in 2025, compared to around twenty per year for a decade, the highest level since the 52 recorded in 2009. In 2026, Christa Pike was to be the 30th person to leave death row.
She was also to be the first woman executed in more than two centuries in Tennessee. The last execution of a woman in the United States dates back to that, in 2023 in Missouri, of Amber McLaughlin, who was also the first transgender woman to be executed in the country. A total of 18 women have been executed on American soil since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, or just over 1% of executions, according to the Capital Punishment Information Center.
