“We have not been informed as to her condition.”
Witnesses on site at the Nashville prison to watch the historic execution take place recalled Pike speaking in full sentences as she was set to be injected with ᴅᴇᴀᴅly drugs, The Tennessean reported.
“My arm feels like it’s about to bust. One spot is really throbbing,” WKRN reporter Tori Gessner heard Pike say.
The convicted killer said she was going to leave this world the same way she spent most of her life: “in love,” ᴀssociated Press reporter Kim Chandler heard her say.
“She said she had love for the people who were out here hating on her,” Chandler said.
“She closed her statement with saying, ‘I’m at peace. I’m ready to be free.’ Then something about celebrating her freedom, and then she closed with, ‘This is a happy day.’”
About an hour after she was given the first injection, Pike was injected with the second ᴅᴇᴀᴅly dose of the drug around 8:30 p.m., and witnesses were asked to leave around 20 minutes later.
The convicted killer could be heard breathing the entire time, according to the media present.
3 Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.AP PH๏τo/George Walker IV
Witnesses were ushered out of the maximum-security lockup as emergency vehicles arrived outside the prison — with no answers as to whether Pike was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ or alive during the chaos.
No officials from the Tennessee Department of Correction were present at the news conference after the execution attempt — as they usually are — with one media witness observing, “nothing about today was normal,” The Tennessean reported.
Following the shocking mishap, Pike’s legal team filed an emergency motion to the Supreme Court to once again stay her execution, arguing that she was in “unnecessary agony” and she was denied her right to be executed without “cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” her attorneys said in a statement, the outlet reported.
“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
3 In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn.WBIR-TV via AP
The Tennessee Department of Correction, however, said it followed all protocols during the botched execution.
“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” department spokesperson Dorinda Carter said by email.
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility.”
In the Volunteer State, prison officials prepare one set of the lethal injection — but have enough of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅly drug on hand to build a second set if needed, according to The Tennessean.
There is a five-minute waiting period after the first set is given, during which the blinds to the death chamber are closed.
If the inmate is not ᴅᴇᴀᴅ after the first set, the backup set is administered — but the protocol doesn’t outline what happens if the second syringes fail to kill the inmate.
By late Wednesday night, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called for a full, independent review of what may have gone wrong and has called off — for the time being — the one remaining execution scheduled in the state before the end of 2026.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and consтιтutional, but is effective,” Lee said in a statement. “Therefore, the remaining scheduled execution will not be carried out this year.”
Pike was handed a death sentence for viciously murdering Colleen Slemmer, 19, in a jealous rage in January 1995.
Her execution was delayed for hours after a dramatic last-minute stay by the Court of Appeals — which was ordered shortly before Pike was set to be put to death at 10 a.m. CDT.
The court ordered the stay based on Pike’s claims that Sєxual abuse and rape she says she suffered as a child were not properly considered when she was sentenced.
The order –– which came after witnesses to the execution had already gathered at the prison –– said that the “short stay of execution” was to last “until further order of this court.”
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office had asked the US Supreme Court to lift the stay shortly after it was announced Wednesday morning.
The AG’s appeal noted the last-minute delay of Pike’s execution traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by her attorneys.
By Wednesday evening, the nation’s top court handed down a 6-3 decision that allowed Pike’s historic execution to go ahead.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented alongside fellow lefty Justices Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor wrote the ruling clears the way for Pike’s execution to happen “before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered.”
“I see no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision,” Sotomayor wrote.
If the state allowed the order to lapse, the Tennessee Supreme Court would have had to set another execution date, according to Nashville-based attorney Kelley Henry, who is experienced with the state’s death penalty law.
Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, 17, and her friend Shadolla Peterson, 18, lured Slemmer, her Jobs Corps classmate, to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus to heinously torture and kill her.
Peterson acted as a lookout while Pike and Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest with a box cutter, gruesomely beat her with a meat cleaver and repeatedly slashed her throat while she pleaded for her life.
At the end of the horrific ordeal, which investigators said lasted at least 30 minutes, Pike murdered Slemmer by bashing her head in with a large chunk of asphalt and then kept a piece of her skull as a souvenir.
Prosecutors said Pike killed the victim because she believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend.
Pike was sentenced to death following her trial in 1996, while Shipp was sentenced to life in prison because he was a juvenile at the time and Peterson received probation for being an accessory after testifying against the pair.
The last woman to be executed in Tennessee was Martin Eve, who was charged with being an accessory to murder and executed by hanging in 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Seeking clemency from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Pike’s lawyers had argued that she had suffered severe Sєxual and physical abuse during her childhood and undiagnosed mental illnesses at the time of Slemmer’s murder.
On Monday, Lee refused to intervene, and the US Supreme Court also denied Pike’s final request for a stay of execution on Tuesday.
In a letter to NBC News before learning that her last-ditch attempts had failed, Pike wrote, “Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace.“
“I am not afraid to die,” she added. “I’m only nervous about the process.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, traveled from her home in Florida to Tennessee for the execution.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen,” she said Tuesday.
“Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51.”
Pike’s time on death row wasn’t without violence.
She was convicted of attempting to murder a fellow inmate by strangling her with a shoestring in August 2001 — and had 25 years tacked onto her sentence.
