Christa Pike, Tennessee's only woman on death row, is still alive, 'conscious' and receiving critical medical care at a Tennessee hospital after she survived lethal injections during her scheduled execution the night of Sept. 30.
Pike was sentenced to death in the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Jacksonville, Florida, native Colleen Slemmer. She received two lethal doses of pentobarbital, but they were unsuccessful and she was rushed to a hospital.
Before her execution date, Pike's legal team argued that she suffered from thrombocytosis, a condition that could increase clotting and pain during the execution process, and said she had smaller veins that were difficult to access.
The state has not said why Pike's execution failed.
Here's what we
know.
Where is Christa Pike?
Pike, 50, continues to recover in a Tennessee hospital, USA TODAY reported.
What is Christa Pike's current condition?
"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care," her attorneys said in a statement on Oct. 6. "Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery."
What happened to Christa Pike? Who is she?
Tennessee was supposed to execute Pike, 50, by lethal injection on Sept. 30 for the brutal and prolonged 1995 murder of 19-year-old Jacksonville native Colleen Slemmer. The execution failed after Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital injections and was taken to a Nashville-area hospital.
A timeline of the chaos in the death chamber compiled by USA TODAY shows that the state tried to kill Pike for over an hour before rushing to save her.
Her attorneys say they believe that Pike's IV lines were improperly placed or that Pike's veins had blown, causing some or all of the pentobarbital to enter her arm rather than her bloodstream. The state has not said why Pike's execution failed.
Who was Colleen Slemmer, Jacksonville teen killed in 1995?
Colleen Slemmer, 19, died Jan. 12, 1995.
Pike, her friend Shandolla Peterson, and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp gathered at an isolated area behind the University of Tennessee's agriculture campus steam plant. With Peterson as lookout, Pike and Shipp tortured Slemmerbefore bludgeoning her to death.
Pike had suspected Slemmer was interested in Shipp.
Slemmer grew up in Orange Park, a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida. She helped paint her school building and volunteered to help during Special Olympics competitions. A wiz with computers, her grandfather suggested she enroll in the Job Corps program in Knoxville to take computer courses, where she met Pike.
“I said, ‘Here we are, 31 years [later], and you’re laughing in my face again.’ And that’s what I feel like they did,” Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told Jacksonville’s First Coast News after Pike survived the Sept. 30 lethal injections that were supposed to end her life.
May Martinez and her husband, Raul Martinez, traveled to Nashville to be present at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution when Pike’s death sentence was carried out.
Christa Pike survived lethal injection. What happens now?
So far, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has not responded to repeated calls from Pike's attorneys and death penalty observers to commute her sentence to life in prison, USA TODAY reported. That leaves open the possibility that Pike will face a second execution, even after her attorneys said the first attempt on Sept. 30 amounted to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
"We’re in uncharted territory," said Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take a stance on the death penalty.
"The U.S. Supreme Court has not decided whether a second execution attempt would violate the constitution since 1947," Maher told USA TODAY. “These are questions that have never needed to be asked before and no one knows the answers.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee recently called for a review Sept. 30 and paused executions for the rest of 2026, The Tennessean reported.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Christa Pike awake after failed execution in murder of Florida teen
