Tennessee halts all executions after Christa Pike SURVIVES two lethal injections and is rushed to hospital

From the Newshound archive · first published 29 September 2026 · last updated 1 October 2026.

Christa Pike, 50, remains alive in hospital after Tennessee's execution attempt went wrong on Wednesday night. Officials administered the maximum permitted two doses of pentobarbital, yet witnesses observed her snoring, complaining of pain and kicking her feet some 40 minutes afterward. Governor Bill Lee has since suspended all scheduled executions and ordered a full review of the process. Pike's lawyers condemned the state's failure as "unnecessary agony" for their client, arguing their prior warnings had gone unheeded. Pike had been convicted of the 1995 torture-murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer and would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than two centuries.

Just hours before the execution, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to lift a stay her lawyers had secured on childhood-abuse grounds, clearing the way for the procedure to go ahead.

Inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, witnesses heard Pike say 'my arm feels like it's about to burst open' before she was taken away by ambulance to hospital.

Governor Lee stated that carrying out a lawful sentence is 'among the State's most serious responsibilities' and must be 'effective' — words widely read as an implicit acknowledgment that the procedure had catastrophically failed.