Christa Pike is back on death row in Tennessee after two torturous botched execution attempts Sept. 30 left her unconscious, but alive. Despite executioners stabbing at her body, attempting to inject two vials of the lethal drug pentobarbital in her arms for over an hour, she survived.
After a delay, Pike was taken to the hospital. Even though she was unconscious, she was shackled to her gurney. Her lawyers were barred from seeing her. At one point medical personnel believed she wouldn’t survive and began making plans to remove her from life support.
But she woke up. She looked around at a room she’d never seen before, didn’t see anyone she’d ever seen before, and saw her shackles. “Where am I?” were her first words since the botched execution attempt. “Who are you?”
While she had little use of her burned and blistered arms, Pike began walking with some assistance and ate a bit. One arm has a blood clot. She also had gotten pneumonia.
She has now been released from the hospital and returned to the badly misnamed Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has served time for 30 years in relative isolation as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. Tennessee Gov. William Lee has paused all further executions while this disaster is examined. It’s unknown what Pike’s prognosis is.
On Oct. 13 the Washington Post reported that when the execution failed, medical dispatchers were called to send an ambulance to the prison.
“There’s someone at the gate telling them to come in, that they need the ambulance, and this is an actual thing that is happening,” ambulance dispatch told a prison official. But dispatch was told, “There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend prison,” where the execution attempt was being carried out.
It took a half hour before the ambulances were admitted to prison grounds and picked up Pike.
Trauma of failed execution
Her lawyers said in a statement that she continues to struggle with concentration and memory. “Christa is dealing with the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution, including the terror, pain and uncertainty of believing she was about to die.”
They say Gov. Lee should commute her sentence to life behind bars.
Pike was the first woman the state had attempted to execute in more than 200 years. She was also the first person to ever survive after being injected with lethal pentobarbital.
On May 21 Tennessee had attempted to execute Tony Carruthers. That attempt was botched by the doctor used by the state in its executions, Dr. Mark Fowler. His name is public through a slip by a prison official that revealed it. He’s the same doctor who botched Pike’s execution.
Lee has paused further executions for now, but he has never granted clemency to any death row inmate. After Carruther’s execution was botched, Lee gave him a one-year reprieve.
In Huntsville, Texas, Oct. 7 Jamaal Howard, 46, became the first person executed in the U.S. since the failed attempt to kill Pike. He was given an injection of pentobarbital after requests by his lawyers for a stay were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
On Oct. 13 Florida prison authorities executed James Robertson, 63, by a three-drug protocol at Florida State Prison in Raiford. Robertson is the 17th inmate executed in Florida this year. There have been 31 executions in the U.S. so far in 2026, with another eight death row prisoners set to be killed before the end of the year.
Another Florida prisoner, William Lee Thompson, 74, was set to be killed by lethal injection on the same day as Robertson, but Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew the death warrant after three psychiatrists he had appointed evaluated Thompson, who has dementia. In an earlier health assessment, his lawyers said he was “confused,” “disoriented,” and thought “Bush” was the president.
Since 2021 under Florida law, the state may not execute anyone who is intellectually disabled. This is the first time DeSantis has withdrawn a death warrant since taking office.