Christa Pike in Critical Condition Following Lethal Injection Attempt

Christa Pike is in critical condition after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital as part of her sentence for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Lawyers for Pike confirmed that she has been rushed to the hospital and that doctors are working to save her life following the botched execution. Attorney Randy Spivey stated, "Christa is alive right now. We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care." Spivey added that doctors worked to start an IV line in Pike for roughly an hour with at least seven needles, one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm. He noted, "The state continues its efforts despite the very complications that we had warned about in court months earlier." Spivey began demanding medical professionals start life-saving procedures after Pike was still breathing despite the lethal injections, stating, "I did not get any information or confirmation that an ambulance was on its way until 8:50. I had no idea when and if medical professionals began to assist Christa." According to The Tennessean, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review and has postponed the state’s only remaining execution scheduled for this year for the second time during his seven years in office. This incident marks the second botched execution under the oversight of Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada. Lee hired Strada in January 2023 from the Arizona Department of Corrections, the year after Strada helped oversee two executions during which officials were unable to find a vein to administer the lethal drugs. In 2022, Lee postponed executions after the Tennessee Department of Correction did not test pentobarbital for bacterial endotoxins before Oscar Franklin Smith’s planned execution. Lee tasked Strada with leading the effort to create a new lethal injection protocol. Lee stated, "This is a process that has been used over 100 times in this country without this outcome. We need to know why the outcome is different this time than ever before. But this is a process that was a protocol that was approved by the attorney general’s office, has been vetted, and a process that’s been used hundreds, over 100 times, in similar situations across the country. There was no reason to expect it to not work, but it didn’t." Christa Pike was found guilty and sentenced to death for participating in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. At the age of 18, she was the youngest woman to receive a death sentence in the United States at the time.