Christa Pike
Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a USA hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her USA prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday.
Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as USA doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system.When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, USA Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on USA “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”
Lawyer says Pike’s USA medical decisions are being decided by someone else
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage in 1995. She became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.Tennessee prison officials gave Pike two doses of the lethal injection drug on Wednesday night. The pentobarbital didn’t kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were 
burned and blistered from the caustic drugs.Pike gave someone her USA medical power of attorney and that person is protecting her privacy, Ferrell said.
“I’m not sure what all they may have told that person,” Ferrell said.
Pike’s attorneys have not identified who is making Pike’s USA medical decisions. They said they may not know for several more days whether or not she can recover.
“We don’t know right now, and we may never know what sort of torture she endured during that process, where her consciousness was, what physical pain there was — what mental torture she went through,” Ferrell said.A spokeswoman for Pike’s defense team said in a statement early Sunday that “we appreciate all respect for Christa’s rightful USA privacy.”Pike’s execution was delayed for more than eight hours Wednesday as the U.S. Supreme Court considered, and ultimately overturned, a federal appeals court ruling to halt her lethal injection so judges could thoroughly review whether the jury that sentenced her to death should have considered sexual abuse she said she suffered as a child.Tennessee, like many other states with capital punishment, keeps many details about executions secret from the people involved to details about how the drugs are manufactured or obtained or any tests done on their quality.
“The state of Tennessee has got to start telling its people exactly what it is doing so that in the democratic process, the people of Tennessee can decide if that’s what they want to be done in their name,” Ferrell told CNN.This was the second time this year Tennessee has not been able to execute a prisoner who was seemingly moments away from death. In May, Tennessee stopped the execution of Tony Carruthers after staff placed an IV into his right arm but couldn’t get a secondary IV line.
USA Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction Frank Strada announced Saturday he was resigning.USA Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent investigation into the state’s capital punishment system conducted by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton. He also reviewed Tennessee’s execution procedures after Lee called off a different execution in 2022 and found the state did not comply with its own lethal injection process.
Pike is being treated at a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, where doctors are attempting to clear the drugs used during the execution from her body, according to legal filings.
She was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Wednesday but remained alive. She was then sent to hospital in an ambulance. While receiving the two doses, "she could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly throughout the procedure", her lawyers said.
As of Thursday night, she was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator.
The state's Department of Correction has defended the method it used, saying "the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out".
Authorities have not yet said whether they will try again to execute Pike. They have also not offered an explanation for what went wrong. Her lawyers filed an emergency motion on Friday to preserve "any and all evidence" related to her failed execution.Pike's attorneys previously warned that her medical history and anatomy - including thrombocytosis (a blood-clotting condition) and small veins - meant there was a risk she would experience "unnecessary" pain and suffering during a lethal injection.The attempted execution went ahead after multiple failed, last-minute legal challenges by Pike's lawyers.
The US Supreme Court rejected two separate efforts to stop the lethal injection.
Tennessee's governor also denied a clemency request from Pike, the only woman on the state's death row.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer in 1995.She was sentenced to death the following year after a media frenzy around the killing in Knoxville, Tennessee.Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike has been taken to hospital after an attempt to execute her by two lethal injections failed, her lawyer says.Her legal team filed an emergency motion to halt the convicted murderer's execution as it was happening, saying: "Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring."One of her attorneys told the BBC that the 50-year-old was now "being provided life-saving measures" in hospital after two syringes of pentobarbital had been administered.Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Her execution was the subject of a last-minute legal battle.This culminated in the US Supreme Court allowing the lethal injections to go ahead.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens.Slemmer's mother May Martinez was among those who wanted the execution to take place. She told NBC News after Wednesday evening's events: "It was a mess."The attempted execution took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at about 20:00 local time (01:00 GMT on Thursday).Pike was given two doses of the chemical pentobarbital and the curtain in the witness room was closed twice, the Associated Press reported.
Media were at some point asked to leave, the news agency said.
AP added that Tennessee's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of pentobarbital-filled syringes in case the person being put to death does not die after the first set. But it does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said in a statement reported by US media that he had ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred". He said the year's last remaining execution would not go ahead as planned.The attempted execution of Pike was not the first in the state in 2026 that did not unfold as planned. The execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed in May after staff were unable to find a vein to administer a lethal drug.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has said it stood by all the actions it took during the attempted execution of Pike.
Department spokeswoman Dorinda Carter told the Tennessean newspaper that it had "followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office".
She said: "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."Pike's legal team said in a statement to the Tennessean newspaper: "Tonight the state of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution."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."Pike's lawyers filed an emergency motion to stay her execution and provide medical care after the lethal injection was apparently botched.District Judge Clifton L Corker issued a ruling noting that "medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion".Dr Joel Zivot, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine who told the BBC he had been retained by Pike's legal team as a medical expert, said she likely never achieved a sufficient blood level of pentobarbital to cause apnoea and cardiovascular failure during the attempted execution."It's very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury," Zivot said.The attempted capital punishment went ahead after multiple last-minute legal challenges by Pike's lawyers failed.The US Supreme Court had thwarted two separate efforts to stop the lethal injection.
Late on Wednesday, the highest US court overturned a reprieve granted by a lower court earlier in the day. The lower court had granted a pause, saying it needed more time to consider the arguments in Pike's case.The Supreme Court had previously dismissed an appeal by Pike's lawyers, who had argued the jury did not get the chance to weigh mitigating evidence of Pike's documented history of childhood sexual abuse before they sentenced her to death in 1996.The defence said that for years, the state of Tennessee had argued in court that she lied about being sexually abused as a child.
But at a recent hearing about her execution method, the state said it did not dispute that she had suffered sexual abuse and rape.
Tennessee's governor denied a clemency request this week from Pike, the only woman on the state's death row.Pike said in her clemency petition that she intended to beat Slemmer, not kill her, but that she was unable to "put the brakes on"."I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid," she said. "It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."The murder in 1995 created a media frenzy in Knoxville, Tennessee, after Colleen was found with an inverted pentagram - a symbol that is associated with satanic groups - carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving the symbol herself.Before the killing, Pike had accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to steal her then-boyfriend.Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder before and after, and showed them a piece of Colleen's skull.Pike's boyfriend and co-defendant Shipp was 17 at the time so was spared the death penalty under state law. He remains in prison.Martinez, Slemmer's mother, said at the weekend that she had waited decades to see Pike's sentence carried out.She told AP that a group helped raise funds for her and her husband to travel from Florida to Tennessee to witness the execution."Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst," Martinez said.Since 1976, when the Supreme Court resumed the death penalty, only 18 women have been executed in the US, compared to 1,663 men. That is about 1% of all US executions.USA Prison officials and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office have said little since Pike was taken to the hospital.Future of Pike’s death penalty case is unclear
It is unclear what will happen in her death penalty case. Pike’s lawyers have asked the governor to commute her punishment to a life sentence.
“If she recovers, she may not fully recover. And there may be issues about her competence,” Ferrell said.Pike didn’t deny she killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The two were classmates at Knoxville Job Corps.
Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. The case got widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the 
people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body.Christa’s Pike failed execution attempt has saved the life of death row inmate Gary Wayne Sutton weeks before he was due to have the lethal injection.Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in two centuries for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.Her execution via lethal injection was scheduled for 30 September and she was taken into the chamber as planned where she said what she believed to be her final words.
When Tennessee sentenced Christa Pike to death on March 30th, 1996, for a crime she committed as an eighteen-year-old, she became the youngest woman to receive a death sentence in the modern era. As the judge sentenced her to die, Christa—her face still sprinkled with adolescent acne—sobbed uncontrollably and called out for her mother. If the State carries out her execution, it will be the first time Tennessee has executed a woman since 1819.
Growing up, Christa suffered an “almost unbearably abusive background,” according to Dr. Jonathan Pincus, Professor of Neurology at Georgetown University. A victim of child sexual abuse, multiple rapes, and parental abandonment and neglect, Christa first attempted to take her own life when she was twelve. When she was seventeen, a stranger grabbed her by the side of the road, threw her down, and violently raped her. The police never arrested him. Without treatment or support, she was forced to navigate both the consequences of her child rapes and the symptoms of untreated mental illness. Nearly a year to the day after the rape, Christa and two other teenagers killed Colleen Slemmer. One of those teenagers was Christa’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp—a boy she loved even after he hit, kicked, and threatened her with a razor blade.
Christa is now 50 years old. She is not the same person she was at the age of eighteen. Medical research conducted over the last two decades has established that the juvenile brain does not fully develop until a person is in their mid-20s. Yet Christa was sentenced to die, while Tadaryl, who was only a few months younger than she at the time of the crime they committed together, was not. The disparate treatment they received is based on Tennessee law that excludes “juveniles”—defined as anyone under the age of 18—from capital punishment. Yet neuroscientists now know that there is no meaningful difference in brain development between a seventeen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old.
Christa has always accepted responsibility for her role in Colleen Slemmer’s death. At the same time, her involvement in the crime cannot be separated from her youth and her history of child sexual abuse, rape, brain impairment, and severe mental illness. Dr. Bethany Brand, a clinical psychologist with over three decades of specializing in the assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders, described Christa’s history as “extraordinarily severe extreme trauma.” According to Dr. Brand, Christa “experienced more severe adverse events than 99% of the US population.”
School offered a respite from her abusive environment. Christa wanted to succeed. Her teachers described her as “intent on helping others” and said there was “something special about her, a spark.” At the same time, however, she was facing a new threat at home. Her mother’s male partners began to abuse Christa as well. One of them used a paddle to beat her, hanging it outside her room as a constant threat. Another punched her in the face, bloodying her nose, and would twist her nipples while they “wrestled.”
Against this background of violence and neglect, Christa became increasingly mentally ill. She failed the seventh grade, despite standardized test scores in the upper percentile for her age group. It would not be until several years after she was sentenced to death that her Bipolar Disorder would be identified and treated, finally explaining the racing thoughts, impulsivity, insomnia, and mood swings she had suffered her entire life.
Christa developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the sexual violence she suffered as a child. People living with PTSD often feel acute terror and helplessness, which can damage parts of the brain responsible for executive decision-making. Christa’s long term clinical therapist, Dr. Ali Winters, who began treating Christa a few years after her death sentence, described her as being in a “near constant ‘fight or flight’ mode.” Because of her childhood trauma, Christa experienced the world as a place of danger that requires constant vigilance. Dissociation was another effect of her severe trauma: she experienced herself as separate from her body, watching herself from the outside.
In a last-ditch attempt to get her life on track, Christa enrolled at the Job Corps in Knoxville, Tennessee, an institution that purported to provide vocational training to troubled youth. She hoped to become a nurse. But instead of providing a stable environment, Job Corps fomented a culture of violence and aggression, where students routinely carried razor blades and box cutters to protect themselves from each other and the rampant violence. Christa quickly fell into an intense relationship with Tadaryl Shipp, who embodied that violent environment and doled out abuse and affection in equal doses. He hit and kicked her. Nonetheless, Christa felt that he loved her and took care of her, saying that no one else had ever protected her like he did.
In the midst of this violent chaos, her mental state deteriorated. “At 18 years old, her immature, traumatized brain made her exceptionally vulnerable to impulses and extremely poor decisions,” Dr. Brand concluded. “Unmedicated and untreated, she was not able to put the ‘brakes on’ her bipolar-and trauma-triggered emotions.”
On January 12, 1995, Christa, Tadaryl, and another teenaged girl killed Colleen Slemmer, also a young Job Corps student. The murder was sensationalized because a pentagram had been carved into the victim’s chest—a reflection of the Satanic imagery that fascinated Tadaryl. The media pounced on this detail and attributed it to Christa, even though Tadaryl admitted that he had done it. (Pike v. State, No. E2009–00016–CCA–R3–PD, 2011 WL 1544207, at *28 (Tenn. Crim. App. Apr. 15, 2011). Tadaryl is now eligible for parole.
Posted on 2026/10/05 09:29 AM