Christa Pike (Tennessee Department of Corrections)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Tennessee prison officials halted the lethal injection of Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday in Nashville after the 50-year-old woman continued to breathe and snore for more than an hour during the procedure.
Nashville prison execution attempt
What we know:
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed just before 6 p.m. Wednesday. Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row, was originally scheduled to die at 10 a.m. at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
The high court's conservative majority cleared the procedure while the three liberal members signed a dissent. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that vacating an earlier stay unnecessarily prevented the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals from considering Pike's claims.
Officials gave Pike two rounds of pentobarbital after she remained alive following the initial dose. The curtain shielding the execution chamber dropped for a final time at 8:05 p.m., while witnesses could still hear her "snoring."
Editor's note: The following section contains witness accounts from inside the execution chamber on Wednesday. Reader discretion is advised.
Timeline of execution events
Timeline:
At 6:27 p.m., witnesses arrived at the Nashville facility and waited nearly an hour. By 6:41 p.m., media members sat inside the witness chamber and heard faint crying.
Following a microphone check at 7:26 p.m., the curtains opened one minute later at 7:27 p.m. Pike laid on the gurney with her curly, blondish-red hair resting downward.
An IV line fed into her right arm, and she started coughing at 7:28 p.m. Pike delivered her final statement before singing "I Love You So Much" with a male spiritual advisor.
The advisor patted her head repeatedly as they spoke. At 7:34 p.m., Pike said, "The vein in my arm feels like it's about to bust."
Pike blinked, smiled, and laughed before a tear rolled down her right eye. She complained that one spot throbbed, prompting her advisor to tell her to relax.
"I'm trying," Pike replied. Between 7:34 p.m. and 7:37 p.m., she asked her advisor to pass a message of love to an unnamed man.
From 7:37 p.m. to 7:41 p.m., Pike took four significant breaths, lifting her body off the gurney. At 7:39 p.m., she lifted her entire head up and looked at her left arm.
She kicked her feet often enough to knock off her sheet, forcing a prison employee to replace it. At exactly 7:41 p.m. and 30 seconds, officials placed a rock for the first time to signify the wait for her death.
Pike's jaws moved at 7:43 p.m. and 28 seconds, and she took a deep breath at 7:44 p.m. She then let out a large yawn at 7:45 p.m.
The curtain dropped for the first time at 7:46 p.m. Three minutes later, at 7:49 p.m., the curtain opened again as Pike began to snore loudly.
Her lip quivered, and she sounded as though she choked. At 7:51 p.m., her snoring started again while prison officials temporarily moved her spiritual advisor in and out of the room.
During this time, alarms sounded in the witness room because communication device batteries used by prison staff were dying. At 7:54 p.m., Pike let out a loud grunt, lifted her head up, and opened her mouth.
Just before 7:56 p.m., her body lifted off the gurney again in a V-shape. Her breathing grew faint at 8 p.m., and officials placed the rock for a second time at 8:01 p.m. and six seconds.
Loud, squeaky snoring returned at 8:02 p.m. The snoring stopped for a second at 8:03 p.m., before returning with a noticeable head and neck flex.
Pike gasped for air and her body flexed at 8:05 p.m., prompting officials to abruptly draw the curtain for the final time. Witnesses listened to her snore consistently behind the curtain as lawyers and the spiritual advisor moved in and out.
At 8:53 p.m., the warden cut the microphone and asked witnesses to leave the area.
Witness accounts of execution
What they're saying:
Media witnesses described a chaotic and agonizing scene inside the chamber. Witnesses repeatedly asked prison staff to open the curtains because they could still hear Pike snoring.
During her final statement, Pike offered a message of peace. "I just want to say that I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love," Pike said.
She added that she loved her haters as much as her supporters. "I'm at peace, and I'm ready to go," she said.
Witnesses noted the abnormality of the state's actions. "I cannot emphasize enough how much of whatever just happened behind a closed curtain when Christa Pike was still alive," one witness said.
Unanswered state protocol questions
What we don't know:
Officials have not confirmed Pike's exact medical status after the microphone cut off at 8:53 p.m. Wednesday. Department of Correction spokesman Dorinda Carter could not immediately explain the execution's failure to media witnesses.
It remains unclear why the state kept the curtains closed from 8:05 p.m. onward while Pike was audibly breathing. Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion to the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday to seek lifesaving measures.
The motion argued Pike was in unnecessary agony, violating her right against cruel and unusual punishment. "Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs," her attorneys wrote.
The 1995 Knoxville murder
The backstory:
Pike was convicted of the 1995 fatal stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike and her boyfriend, Tadull Shipp, lured their job training classmate to a wooded area in Knoxville on Jan. 12, 1995.
Pike attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, carved a pentagram into Slemmer's body.
The crime fueled "satanic panic" fears during the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole, while a judge sentenced Pike to death.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell argued Pike's sentence was an outlier because other 18-year-olds had sentences vacated. Pike claimed she suffered from mental illness, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid," Pike said in a statement. "It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."
She filed a clemency petition arguing she only wanted to fight Slemmer but could not stop herself. Her attorneys also argued her jury never considered facts about her being severely sexually abused since she was a toddler.
Victim's family seeks justice
The other side:
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, previously said she waited decades to see the state carry out Pike's sentence. Martinez noted her daughter would have turned 51 in September.
Supporters raised money to fly Martinez and her husband from Florida to witness the execution. "Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run," Martinez said.
Martinez argued Pike's age at the time of the crime shouldn't prevent the punishment. "Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen," Martinez said. "Holidays are the worst."
The Tennessee attorney general's office echoed these sentiments in its appeal. The office argued that halting the execution traumatized the family and rewarded "abusive delay tactics" by Pike's attorneys.
Death row statistics
By the numbers:
Tennessee has not executed a woman in at least 200 years. Pike was scheduled to be the 30th person executed in the United States this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Since 1976, states have put 18 women to death. Women represent about 1% of all executions nationwide.
Most recently, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing in 2023. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from the execution witnesses: Will Puckett of WVLT, Tory Gessner of WKRN, John North of WBIR, Steven Hail of the Nashville Banner, Catherine Sweeney of WPLN, and Damon Lawrence of the Roane County News, who provided eyewitness accounts from the execution chamber, as well as the Associated Press, and the Tennessean, who provided the initial information.