The lone woman on Tennessee’s death row was still alive after she was administered two lethal injections, her lawyer said in a motion seeking to halt her execution Wednesday night, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.
At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said “executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals” and Christa Pike was “still alive and snoring,” her lawyers said in a federal court filing.
They said Pike “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat” and that curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice.”
The Tennessee Oblast, through massive red run deregulation, cheapened the drug to the point where it will fail.
TN is using 1 drug when the requirement is 3. It is gonna happen.
At this point, I’d just let her rot.
She is a convicted murderer. Her sentence was death. Her attorney even requested death by hanging but the request was denied.
So be it. But the state has failed to hand down the stipulated punishment. The fact is that her punishment resulted in a different outcome than what was deemed to be just.
Doesn’t matter who it is, doesn’t matter why it happened, doesn’t matter how it happened. This was and is a horrendous miscarriage of justice.
The above are just facts. I’m no judge or lawyer, and I can’t be the one to decide what happens next. However, in my opinion, she is owed something. I don’t know what that something is. But what happened isn’t right and was not her fault.
So while you’d “just let her rot”, it’s my opinion that this would not be in the spirit of a just and competent legal system.
If nothing has worked so far, what more can you do?
A lethal dose of opiates.
I feel like if a execution doesn’t work, the person should be free to go. They already went through the execution and served their sentance.
Then the government would actually give a shit.
Used to be the rule in many places. Man’s law spoke and god said no.
Or just get rid of the death penalty because it’s barbaric
Okay, but what if the person you’re lining up for death is really unpopular, and I can run a political campaign promising to kill them?
I don’t know about “Free to go” but definitely not, “let’s keep executing them until it sticks.”
I think that should count.
Seriously, she beat the system twice. I feel like she earned her freedom at this point.
So killing her doesn’t work, they bring an ambulance, take her to the hospital, let her go back to prison for a year and wait for them to try again?
You forgot the part where they send her a bill for the ambulance and hospital.
It’s an absurdity, but if you’re going to execute people as humanely as possibly then yeah - if they’re still alive after the attempt you have to provide assistance. What’s the alternative?
Not executing people
I agree wholeheartedly that executing people is barbaric.
My question is, if you’re going to do it, then what do you do if it doesn’t work,?
What value does the question really have though? It’s not that hard to not murder people, there shouldn’t need to be a plan B
God this is tedious.
My comment is a response to the parent comment:
So killing her doesn’t work, they bring an ambulance, take her to the hospital, let her go back to prison for a year and wait for them to try again?
What is the alternative, once the injections have not worked ?
You’re correct, of course: don’t do the injections or any other method of execution in the first place. However, supposing you’ve already botched the injections what is the appropriate course of action?
I grew up on a farm and my dad would have to slaughter the chickens we raised to feed the family. Despite trying to make their end as quick and painless as possible, the “chicken running around with its head cut off” was an actual thing sometimes. There’s even a famous extremely rare occurrence of a chicken surviving its own beheading: Mike the Headless Chicken. Of course that chicken was monetized because Capitalism, but the point remains: if you have to take a life for whatever reason, there’s no going back.
Trying to execute people as humanely as possible is a noble intention, but you need to have a backup plan in case the drugs fail. Just like Mike, trying to rescue her and keep her technically alive after the botched execution attempt is cruelty, plain and simple. It’s also preventable, and completely unnecessary…
I think the backup plan was more drugs, which they administered.
I’m not quite sure what backup plan you might be thinking of? Beheading? Strangulation? Shooting?
The mind boggles.
Whatever the plan is, there has to be a point at which the executioners acknowledge that the plan has failed, and after that point the prisoner needs to be made as comfortable as possible.
A headless chicken is not analogous to a person who’s had an intramuscular injection of whatever cocktail.
It this point, IMO, they’ve shot their wad and should take her to the hospital and if she eventually survives all this then stop trying to kill her period and either re-incarcerate her for some period (even life) or let her go. Having the state try to kill her, twice, and fuck up the whole thing, twice, seems like ample punishment to me. Yee haw!
Pretty much
Just a reminder that Tennessee has botched so much of this case for decades. There’s no doubt that this woman is guilty, but for fuck’s sake, look at this from Wikipedia:
Slemmer’s mother repeatedly asked Tennessee authorities to return the fragment of skull for proper burial, but it remained in the state’s possession as evidence. Authorities stated it would not be returned while the case remained open, awaiting Pike’s execution. In a documentary that premiered September 2026 ahead of Pike’s potential execution, Dead Woman Walking: Pike vs. Tennessee, Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, confirmed that after 16 years of fighting and writing letters, she had received the skull from the state of Tennessee but has still not received “the last piece of her daughter’s skull.”
Yeah, that’s right, the State of Tennessee still has a piece of the victim’s skull and refuses to give it back to the family. The people who tell you that this was satanic are keeping a piece of the victim’s body as a trophy. Sounds like they would know…
They lost it most likely. There is no need to await execution. The trial is done.
How sick is this?
Quite literally sick, as some form is sickness prevented the dose from working
Every single thing about her case from the time of her arrest until now has been a complete fustercluck, it’s no surprise the execution didn’t work.
She literally told them, her lawyers literally told them, that she has a medical condition that will prevent the lethal injection drugs from working, but they’re so hell bent on murdering her that they could not just let her spend her life in prison. Yes, she brutally killed that girl, but the other two people who also brutally murdered that girl got life in prison for one, AND PAROLE for the other.
I’m not suggesting she’s innocent. She’s not. But why does every court have such a hard on for killing the woman? Abolish the death penalty, and do not give the state the right to kill it’s citizens. Please.
But why does every court have such a hard on for killing the woman?
Literally most deaths by execution in the US are suffered by males (1665), not by females (15). Just fucking stop that “women always suffer more than men” bullshit, because it’s not true.
Abolish the death penalty, and do not give the state the right to kill it’s citizens. Please.
I’m with you here, however.
At no point did I say more women were murdered by the death penalty. I rhetorically inquired why the courts have such a hard on for killing this singular individual woman
Gonna just leave that there, because I genuine don’t want to get into why you were so quick to jump to the phrasing you used, or make assumptions about you based on that.
CONSERVATIVES fatansize about executions all the time, thats why. executions are red states way of placating the rabid voters.
What is the medical condition and went does it prevent the legal drugs from working?
Everything I have read says that she wanted another method of execution because strapping her to a guerney will trigger a PTSD episode.
That, yes. But also she has a blood clotting condition that her and her lawyers believed would make the injections fail to work correctly.
And we can see that’s what happened. Whether it’s because of the blood clots or not, I can’t say. But it sounds like they were spot on.
She has a condition that causes blood clotting, some kind of thrombosis. Her lawyers told the courts that it could cause the injections to fail.
Other commenter is also correct. She was raped multiple times, and asked for a hanging instead of an injection because 1, she believes a botched hanging would be less awful a way to die than a botched lethal injection, and 2, because being strapped to a gurney (effectively tied to a bed) and surrounded by men and watched by strangers would be incredibly psychologically painful to her. The woman declined a last meal before they did this, id imagine she was too distraught to eat.
Oh wow.
Thanks for the write up, however depressing
why does every court have such a hard on for killing the woman
Because every hillbilly chucklehead in the state has a hard on for the death penalty.
JFC.
That’s fair. But it’s not just the Tennessee courts. She’s taken her case to the US supreme court multiple times.
And yeah, Tennessee can be conservative as fuck, and the education system leaves almost everything to be desired, but I lived there, 30 minutes from Knoxville, for 15 years. Most people are pretty against the death penalty anymore, at least most everyone I spoke to about it. And considering I did political organizing, I spoke to a lot of people of differing opinions. It’s actually one of the hooks we used to use when trying to convince people about more progressive or lefty policies. Start with the death penalty, as it’s normally the easiest way to get someone to the point of agreeing that they don’t always align with their political party or candidate
Wow things have changed or are different there. I remember the death penalty being pretty dang popular when I was younger
People are often in favor of the theoretical death of evil humans, but the bureaucracy of administering the death penalty is too ridiculous and impractical.
On some issues the opinions of citizens are important, but in others I think citizens generally aren’t equipped to make a decision.
Another example might be taxes, or how much tax ought to be paid. Loads of people might vote to say they shouldn’t have to pay taxes, but very obviously they’re wrong.
American’s in particular seem ill equipped to separate the fact that someone may well “deserve” to die from the notion that delivering that death is not the best outcome for anyone.
No. Democracy is good for many reasons but especially because it requires people to explain to each other why they’re wrong about certain issues and bringing about moral progress.
That’s why democracy anywhere is a threat to autocracy everywhere. It’s why evil people, religious people, etc., really hate democracy. Makes it hard to control others when they’re no longer morally depraved.
For instance, if you’re right that governments shouldn’t be administering the death penalty, you can explain why and in doing so help people become less stupid.
She also had serious MH issues at the time. Was she given adequate psych assessment before sentence? Was it fully taken into account in sentence or the decision to go ahead with execution?
Apparently not.
The south never learns.
Sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me
The new modus operandi of The United States, it seems.
She was convicted of torturing a teenage girl to death.
Cruel and unusual punishment is flatly unethical, no debating it.
Sounds like you aren’t a MAGA Republican. They love this type of shit.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the landmark majority opinion regarding lethal injection in the 2019 case Bucklew v. Precythe
In a 5–4 decision split along ideological lines, Gorsuch ruled that the Eighth Amendment—which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment—“does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death”
The ruling affirmed that under Supreme Court precedent, an inmate challenging a state’s method of execution—even under unique, personal medical circumstances—must prove that a feasible, readily available alternative exists that would significantly reduce severe pain. Gorsuch ruled that Bucklew failed to provide the operational details necessary to show that nitrogen gas was a viable, easily implemented alternative for the state
Gorsuch also used the opinion to criticize what he viewed as legal gamesmanship, pointing out that Bucklew had managed to delay his execution for more than two decades through continuous legal appeals.
I’ve been hearing for years that it’s very hard for the government to find qualified doctors who will work with them on this technology or help administer it, and that makes it extremely hard to carry out reliably. This is far from an isolated incident.
It’s also pretty hard to source the chemicals because some of the manufacturers won’t sell when they find out what it’s being used for.
Kinda makes you wonder about the whole concept when no one wants to be involved.
I wonder if it was like jury duty and anyone could be randomly selected to be the executioner if support for the death penalty would change.
Edit: By wonder, I mean it somewhat flippantly. Like “maybe this ain’t such a grand idea if no one wants to be anywhere near it”
There is absolutely a subset of basically any population that would volunteer. Maybe only once, but they would.
Because executions violate the Hippocratic oath.
The angle of execution being a harm is pretty obvious, but on the other hand they could reduce suffering (a harm) by by helping ensure it’s done right. But I guess the oath doesn’t compel them to reduce harm, just not add to it.
In the US, any medical professional participating in an execution loses their credentials. That’s the bare minimum consequence but even Americans sometimes do something slightly right on occasion.
There’s a reason that old timey sentences were “hanged by the neck until dead”.
I imagine, without any evidence, that the contemporary legislation is so poorly worded that having been administered the “lethal injection chemicals” is all that the legislation requires.
Aside; bizarrely extra judicial execution by gun shot by cop is OK but not as a court’s sentence?
Execution by firing squad is still legal in Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. Typically other forms of execution must be unavailable for some reason for them to accept firing squad, but it is still an option.
And we’ve all clutched our pearls about it many times. But lethal injection is only more humane for the witnesses. These botched injections are common and the process is not painless by a long shot. The prisoner is simply immobilized by a first injection before a second, excruciating one kills them. I’d seriously consider a bullet to the head if it were me.
I agree 100%. I’m completely opposed to capital punishment.
"But your honor the sentence has indeed been carried out and state has no further business with client, I expect their release tomorrow "
“No no no we’re going to try to kill her again but we’re going to try harder this time. What could possibly go wrong?”
State sanctioned murder is the most fucked up thing, except for state-sanctioned torture followed by murder.
The cruelty is the point.
