Nocturnal 
Christa Pike is still being treated in a Nashville hospital after surviving a botched lethal injection in Tennessee last Wednesday, and questions are now mounting over whether the state could legally try to execute her again.
A former lawyer has suggested that any second attempt could be banned outright if Pike, 50, was left with a brain injury from the ordeal, according to LADbible. Her current legal team have said the extent of any brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation during the failed execution is still unknown, as reported by The Guardian.
Pike was sentenced to death in March 1996 for the murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, who was tortured and killed in a jealousy-fuelled attack in 1995. She was due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Her execution went ahead at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after a last-minute legal challenge over claims of childhood sexual abuse was rejected by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Pike was injected with two full syringes of the sedative pentobarbital – a 5g dose that would normally be fatal, according to The Guardian.
Witnesses said Pike lifted her head during the procedure, complained of a “burning” sensation in her arm and was later heard “loudly snoring” before officials halted the process, as reported by The Tab. Her lawyer, Randy Spivey, said he counted seven needles inserted into her arm, one of which appeared to bend as it was removed, according to Yahoo.
Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions in the state for the rest of the year and ordered an independent review into what went wrong.
Why it matters
Surviving an execution attempt does not automatically stop a state trying again. In 2016 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a second attempt was not inherently barred by the US constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, according to TRT World.
That precedent has played out before. Alabama’s Kenneth Eugene Smith survived a failed lethal injection in 2022 after staff couldn’t access a vein, and was executed in January 2024 using nitrogen gas instead, despite his lawyers arguing a second attempt would be unconstitutional. Alan Eugene Miller also survived a failed injection in Alabama before being executed by a different method later.
Pike’s case, however, is being described as unprecedented. Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher called it “the worst we’ve seen” and said “there is no precedent” for what happened, according to Yahoo. Cornell law scholar Sandra Babcock, who advises Pike’s legal team, told The Guardian the events were “unimaginably barbaric” and said Lee must now “commute Christa Pike’s death sentence to life imprisonment”.
It is also the second botched execution in Tennessee this year. The same physician, Dr Mark Fowler, was involved in the failed attempt to execute Tony Carruthers in May, when staff couldn’t establish the required IV access, according to TRT World.
What happens next
Pike’s current condition has not been fully confirmed, and her legal team say it remains unclear whether she sustained lasting brain damage. Any attempt to carry out a second execution is expected to face fresh legal challenges, potentially centred on whether a brain injury would make it unconstitutional to proceed.
For now, Tennessee’s independent review is ongoing and no further executions are scheduled in the state this year. Pike remains the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
