Christa Pike did not die on the night she was supposed to die.
She was 50 years old and had spent nearly three decades on Tennessee’s death row for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. On September 30, she received two doses of pentobarbital over the course of more than an hour and was still alive.
Her lawyers say the team used numerous needles to find a vein, that the drug never reached her bloodstream, and that her arms were swollen and blistered by the time she arrived at the hospital. Today, she is in critical condition.
One day later, Donald Trump spoke in Texas. He said it was an “interesting” situation, that the medication “didn’t work exactly”, and that an execution “shouldn’t be that difficult”. He clarified that deciding what to do now is up to the state.
Governor Bill Lee has already suspended the executions scheduled for the rest of 2026 and ordered an independent review. Christa would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Video: