Kim Chandler and James Stengle

Updated October 3, 2026 — 11:13am,first published October 3, 2026 — 5:20am

Warning: Graphic content

Convicted killer Christa Pike was placed on a ventilator and unconscious in a hospital in the hours after her failed execution in Tennessee, her lawyers said in a court filing.

Hospital staff, her lawyers said, were working to save Pike’s life and clear two doses of the drug that the states uses to execute prisoners.

The stunning failure in Tennessee’s execution chamber on Wednesday has left both sides of the death penalty debate demanding answers. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review.

The court filing on Friday (US time) offered the first detailed account of Pike’s condition after an ambulance took her from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Her attorneys said on Thursday she was in critical condition.

Pike’s attorneys said they believed problems with the IV lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.

“Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms Pike’s body,” they wrote.

Instead of “remedying this failure”, they prepared and administered a back-up set of pentobarbital syringe, her lawyers said.

State officials have not offered any explanations about what went wrong.

Lee demanded a review of the execution procedures and indefinitely postponed Pike’s execution and another scheduled for this year. Republican Tennessee lawmakers said the state should review whether to stop single-drug lethal injections and consider other options to carry out death sentences.

There are also new doubts about whether any future attempt to execute Pike can ever proceed.

The New York Times reported that Pike’s present condition sets the stage for an unprecedented ethical and legal quagmire, with any future attempt relying on whether she is deemed capable of what the Supreme Court has described as a “rational understanding” of why she is to be put to death.

The execution team worked for an hour to administer the lethal drugs, said Pike’s defence lawyer Randy Spivey, who counted at least seven needles in her left arm.

Neither the initial nor the back-up dose of pentobarbital worked. Pike, 50, was still snoring when the execution chamber’s microphone was cut off more than an hour into the attempt.

Pike’s attorneys asked a state court to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all evidence from the failed execution.

“Preserving this evidence is essential to understanding what happened, ensuring accountability and protecting Christa’s legal rights,” two of her attorneys said in a statement.

Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19, in a jealous rage. She later became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.

Following the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, her attorneys said.

“It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in an earlier clemency petition.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, expressed frustration over the failed execution. “I didn’t get justice for my daughter,” Martinez said on Thursday.

Four years ago, Tennessee’s governor ordered another independent review into capital punishment after abruptly stopping the April 2022 execution of Oscar Smith. Lee then paused all executions after acknowledging the state had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.

Months later, a report found the state hadn’t complied with its own lethal injection process since its revision in 2018, which resulted in executions being conducted without drugs being properly tested.

At the time, the state used a three-drug execution protocol of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The state later switched to using just pentobarbital.

Pentobarbital has been used to carry out death sentences in multiple states and by the federal government.

The previous review in Tennessee, led by former US attorney Ed Stanton, also found that the state’s unidentified executioner had no formal healthcare training and learnt the role mainly through on-the-job experience.

After the release of the report, the Tennessee Department of Correction fired its longtime top attorney and another employee.

AP

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