Tennessee Botches Execution: Inmate Still Snoring After Two Doses Of Pentobarbital, Hauled To Hospital

The State of Tennessee spent Wednesday trying to carry out a death sentence it has had on the books for thirty years, and ended the night with the condemned woman in an ambulance.

Christa Gail Pike, 50 – the only woman on Tennessee’s death row – was still breathing, audibly snoring, and maintaining a heartbeat after prison staff administered two doses of pentobarbital at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Media witnesses were escorted out around 8:53 p.m. local time while her snoring could still be heard. Pike was subsequently rushed to an off-site hospital, prompting Governor Bill Lee to halt all remaining executions for the year and order a third-party review.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the torture-murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a Job Corps classmate she lured into the Knoxville woods in January 1995 at age 18 – where she bashed the girl’s skull in with a chunk of asphalt after carving a pentagram into the victim’s chest with a friend. Pike started showing off pieces of Slemmer’s skull at school, at which point she was arrested (with a chunk of skull found in her pocket). 

Fox 17 investigative reporter Kelly Avellino posted that Pike “appeared to receive 2 doses of pentobarbital, and she was still awake 40 minutes after” before being transported. 

Unbelieveable. Officials were unable to carry out the execution of Christa Gail Pike, witnesses said, after the lethal injection was administered. Pike appeared to receive 2 doses of pentobarbital, and she was still awake 40 minutes after. Pike is now en route to the hosptial. https://t.co/oUfWXlhAsx

— Kelly Avellino (@KellyAvellino) October 1, 2026

A day that started in court and ended in an ambulance

Pike was scheduled to die at 10 a.m. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in roughly 200 years, and the 19th woman executed in the United States since 1976.

That morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a short 2-1 stay. The Tennessee attorney general immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate it. Just before 6 p.m., the Court complied, issuing a two-sentence order devoid of reasoning. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, with Sotomayor writing that “Tennessee’s desire to expedite Pike’s execution by a few days or even weeks cannot outweigh her ‘fundamental interest in [her] own life.’” She added that in capital cases, an “appreciation of our own fallibility” demands caution “before acting irretrievably.” With the legal roadblocks cleared, the state proceeded.

The judicial scramble followed Governor Lee’s denial of clemency two days prior. On Sept. 28, he announced that after “deliberate consideration,” he would uphold “the sentence of the State of Tennessee.”

What the witnesses actually saw

Tennessee Lookout and the Tennessean reconstructed the chaotic scene inside the chamber using accounts from media witnesses, including reporters from WBIR, WKRN, WVLT, the Nashville Banner, and the AP:

• 6:41 p.m. Witnesses enter. Curtain closed. Groaning and crying are audible before the microphone is turned on.
• 7:26 p.m. Curtain opens. Pike, strapped to the gurney, delivers her final statement. She says she is “going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is in love,” extending that love even to people “hating on her.” She closes with, “I’m at peace. I’m ready to be free. This is a happy day.”
• 7:34 p.m. “My arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” Pike says. A witness also reports hearing, “One spot is really throbbing.”
• 7:39 p.m. Pike is still lifting her head, taking deep breaths, and kicking her feet hard enough to knock the sheet off.
• 7:41 p.m. An employee places a rock in view of the witnesses – the protocol’s signal that the inmate appears comatose. However, Pike’s jaw is still moving. Minutes later, she opens her mouth in “a very large yawn.”
• 7:46 p.m. Curtain drops.
• 7:49 p.m. Curtain rises. Pike is loudly snoring. A spiritual adviser is brought back into the chamber.
• 7:54 p.m. Pike grunts, lifts her head, and opens her mouth.
• 7:56 p.m. Her body jolts off the gurney into a “V” shape, head and legs lifting simultaneously.
• 8:01 p.m. The rock is placed a second time. Pike is still breathing, snoring, and flexing her neck.
• 8:05 p.m. Curtain is closed for good.
• Until 8:53 p.m. Rhythmic snoring continues behind the curtain, punctuated by the sound of doors opening and closing. The microphone is cut, and witnesses are escorted out. As far as they know, Pike is still alive.

WKRN’s Tori Gessner, a veteran of multiple Tennessee executions, told the Lookout: “Nothing about today was normal, typical at all, and the court delay was just the tip of the iceberg.” Nashville Banner’s Steven Hale added: “I cannot emphasize enough how much of whatever just happened, happened behind a closed curtain… When Christa Pike was still alive, we could still hear her breathing, but we could not see what was going on.”

Shortly after 9 p.m., ambulances and fire trucks were seen departing Riverbend with their emergency lights activated.

The state’s line, and the lawyers’ line

More than two hours after the botched execution, Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman Dorinda Carter issued the following statement:

“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office. 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.”

So if two rounds fail to kill the inmate, protocol dictates the execution ends and the inmate goes to a hospital.

Pike’s attorneys offered the following statement:

“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.”

In an emergency motion filed while Pike was still in the chamber, her defense informed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee that she “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring.” Attorney Kelly Gleason stated Pike desperately needed immediate medical care, noting that counsel couldn’t get state officials on the phone to halt the process. Judge Clifton L. Corker ultimately ruled the motion moot because the state had already informed the court that medical care was underway. Pike’s current condition remains unreleased, though one of her lawyers told the BBC she was “being provided life-saving measures.”

Dr. Joel Zivot, a medical expert retained by the defense, told the BBC it is “very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury.” He suggested Pike likely never absorbed a sufficient blood level of pentobarbital to stop her breathing and circulation. Notably, no independent toxicology report has been produced.

Lee hits pause

At approximately 11:16 p.m., Governor Lee halted another execution scheduled for later this year. Via the Tennessean:

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective. … Therefore, the remaining scheduled execution will not be carried out this year.”

Lee ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review” of the Pike debacle – while Gary Wayne Sutton, who was scheduled to die on Dec. 3 for the 1992 murders of Tommy Griffin and Connie Branam in Blount County – was spared for now. 

Lee had explicitly declined to halt Pike’s execution. His attorney general’s office spent the afternoon racing to the Supreme Court to ensure it happened Wednesday night rather than next week. The protocol the AG approved is the very same one Carter proudly claimed was followed to the letter. Whether it was “effective” is a separate question, and on Wednesday night, the undeniable answer was no.