Christa Pike is conscious and speaking in a Nashville hospital after surviving two doses of pentobarbital in Tennessee on September 30, 2026, her lawyers said on Tuesday, October 6. She is 50. The state had set out to make her the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time. The execution attempt was at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Witnesses were brought in at 6:41 pm. The blinds opened at 7:26 pm. Two syringes of the single-drug protocol went in. She was still breathing.
Awake, and still shackled
“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care,” attorneys Randy Spivey, Kelly Gleason and Luke Ihnen said. “Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery.”
They asked Governor Bill Lee to commute the sentence to life without parole. A hearing on a request to preserve evidence from the attempt is set for Wednesday in Davidson County Chancery Court. On Friday, the same lawyers had said she was unconscious, critically ill, and on a ventilator while doctors tried to clear the drug.
WPLN reporter Catherine Sweeney, a media witness, said that night, “They went through two rounds, and she was still breathing at the end.” Fordham law professor Deborah Denno told the BBC she was “absolutely astonished.” Denno said seven other prisoners had survived execution attempts because nothing could be injected. Pike, she said, “is the only person for whom some kind of toxin has been injected.”
Lee, who had denied clemency, suspended executions for the rest of the year and ordered a third-party review of the attempt. Tennessee had already stopped one execution this year, in May, after staff could not find a usable vein.
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