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Two purportedly lethal injections or pentobarbital were administered on September 30, 2026 to Christa Pike around 8 p.m. local time.
She would have been the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years. And yet, she lived.
Christa Pike’s Botched Execution
The injections were administered at 8 p.m., and the witnesses present in the media viewing room stated that they heard Pike complaining of pain in her arm. One of the media witnesses present in the viewing room said that Pike even asked the prison officials if it was “supposed to feel that way.”
The media viewing room curtains were closed around 8:06pm, but the microphone in the room was still on, and the witnesses reportedly heard Pike snoring. Around 8:53 p.m., Pike was still alive and the witnesses were ushered out of the room.
Pike was rushed to a nearby hospital where she is currently still unconscious and intubated, receiving medical care to clear the pentobarbital from her system.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has halted all executions in Tennessee for the remainder of the year while the state investigates what happened. Pike’s lawyers assert that her IVs were not properly placed and infiltrated, and her veins had blown, which leaked the pentobarbital into her soft tissue instead of her veins.
And to make matters worse, this is the second botched lethal injection in Tennessee this year, the last one not 5 months ago, done by the same doctor, Dr. Mark Fowler.
So what landed her on death row in the first place?
Christa Pike’s Crime: Murder of a 19 Year Old
Pike was a teenager when she brutally tortured and murdered a peer.
In August 1995, 18-year-old Pike, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and an acquaintance named Shadolla Peterson lured 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer into a wooded area on the University of Tennessee campus. Once there, Pike and Shipp slashed at her with a knife and then smashed her head with a rock. Pike kept a piece of the victim’s skull as a trophy.
Newspapers at the time claimed it was part of a satanic ritual, and that the Job Corps had a strong occult presence in their population, but we encourage you to take this with a grain of salt, considering the context of news articles being written by white men in the south in the 90s, and all the implications that go along with that context.
I want to note here, quickly, that many on social media claim that she “drank” from this piece of the skull in a satanic-style ritual. I have tried to confirm this, but there is no known testimony or evidence supporting this social media claim that I could find. If you have a credible source for this claim, please feel free to share, but otherwise, I think it is reasonable to consider this as misinformation.
The satanism claims aside, it was allegedly all because she thought Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend.
All three faced charges in court, but while Pike received the death penalty, Shipp received life (with parole), despite participating actively in the murder. This sentence was mainly credited to the fact that Shipp was 17, mere months younger than Pike, but still not considered an adult. Shadolla Peterson, who was 18 at the time of the crime, was sentenced with only probation in exchange for her cooperation.
When Pike’s sentencing was read in court, the first thing she did was ask, “Can I please hug my mom?”
A screenshot of Christa Pike at her sentencing.
What did not come out in trial but was later discovered was that Pike had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder with a childhood filled with physical and sexual abuse, as well as neglect from her alcoholic parents.
If you’re interested in learning more about what Christa Pike was like as an adult, this is an interesting article by the BBC about someone who had the chance to meet her.
The Issue With the Death Penalty
Criminal justice is unfortunately complex and nuanced, demonstrated by some of the facts above. The death penalty is a very permanent solution to a complicated issue.
It is often asserted that if even one innocent person were to be potentially executed, the death penalty should be abolished. And yet many innocent have been.
Innocent People Have Been Executed
There are many stories of people being coerced into confessions of guilt, later proven to be innocent, but by then, it was too late.
In the last 50 years, over 200 people have been exonerated after their executions. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, at least 1 in every 8 people have been exonerated after death.
That number does not even fully touch on the number of people with developmental disabilities and juveniles that have been executed, which are cases that carry their own moral dilemmas with capital punishment.
Botched Executions Are More Common Than You Think
In the past 120 years, 276 executions have reportedly been botched, although it’s possible that the actual number is higher than that. Lethal injection had the highest rate of botched executions, with most being because the untrained execution staff struggled to find a vein or properly insert the IV for the drugs.
I’ll be honest. This was meant to be a longer, more informative article, but I’m instead only going to leave you with one last story. Yes, it’s only one story of a botched execution, when there are so many to pull from to provide a better sample. If you’re interested in learning more, you can visit this link.
I read through every single story of a botched execution on that site, and looked further into a few of them last night, and I feel sick from it. It has made my body feel heavy, I have had tremors all day, and I don’t think I can do much more research on the topic to provide you with a sterilized synopsis beyond what I have written so far. It is gruesome.
And then the video of Christa Pike being sentenced to the electric chair when she was just 18 made me break down. The system failed her and her victim, and it has not repented of its failings, nor has it done enough to avoid repeating its mistakes.
Christa Pike’s story should have been a lesson in how much our children need us. Fund education. Support programs that help abused children. Invest in studies to help us understand better how to diagnose and help children with disorders early on. But instead, we chose an eye-for-an-eye.
After what I’ve found in the research for this article, all I can think is that our country is sick, it has always been sick, and we are not progressing and trying to be better at an acceptable rate. We know better. Right now, we know better than what we are allowing to happen around us, and still, it is happening.
This last story I’m going to share is enough. It should be enough for anyone to want to put an end to the death penalty and work to reform our justice system right now. This event happened only 80 years ago. My grandpa was alive. And I would posit that we have not progressed enough to truly pay penance for what we did.
Willie Francis, 17 Year-Old Black Teenager Electrocuted Twice
80 years ago, in Louisiana, young Willie Francis was convicted of murdering local pharmacist, Andrew Thomas. Francis was only 15 years old at the time of the crime.
Andrew Thomas was found outside of his home, shot multiple times and deceased. Francis was suspected of being involved in drug activity, and when finally caught, they say he confessed to the robbery and murder of Thomas.
“Willie was black [sic], barely literate, stuttered badly and was sixteen years old [at the time of the trial]. The thirteenth child of a nearly penniless agricultural worker, Willie could not afford an attorney of his own choosing. His two court-appointed lawyers called no defense witnesses, declined either to cross-examine prosecution witnesses or to question Willie’s obviously flawed ‘confession,’ did not file a motion for a new trial, and did not initiate an appeal. Finally, no stenographic record was made of Willie’s trial proceedings.” (Carleton, 1990)
An all-white jury found Willie Francis guilty within 15 minutes and Willie was sentenced to die.
The day of his execution, they strapped him to the chair. Gilbert King wrote “The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South” in 2008, and described what happened next in his book:
“The Executioner said, “Goodbye, Willie,” which is what they said right before they flipped the switch and then he flipped the switch. Immediately, Willie began to shake in the chair. He started going into convulsions, and the chair—if you can imagine, it’s a very small room in this jail, the witnesses were warned to stay back because they didn’t want to get too close to this thing—the chair began to slide in the little room, and it angled away from the witnesses, and Willie was shaking and fighting against the straps, and it looked like something was wrong. The sheriff sort of said, “This is not usual.” And then they flipped the switch off and one of the coroners and the doctor stepped forward with a stethoscope and was about to lift his shirt apart, and put it right to his chest. When the other doctor said, “It’s no use to do that, he’s still breathing.” And at that moment, Willie took a deep breath and started breathing, and the executioner heard this and he said, “Well, we’ll give him another.” And he flipped the switch again. The doctors stepped back, and Willie started shaking again and the chair, according to witnesses, began to slide and rock on the floor. Next thing that happened is Willie screamed out. He’s got a mask on and he’s got a leather band in his mouth, and he screams out, “Take it off! Take it off! I can’t breathe!” And the executioner is kind of incredulous seeing this, and he shoots back, “You’re not supposed to breathe, boy!” And they let the current continue to go, and this goes on for at least 30 seconds, according to witnesses, until finally Willie screams out, “I am not dying!” At that point, Sheriff Reisweiber had seen enough. It just wasn’t gonna happen that day, and they turned off the machine.”
A long legal battle ensued with attorneys arguing that any further executions would violate the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Nonetheless, one year later, Willie Francis was strapped back into the electric chair, given two jolts, and declared dead at 12:12pm.
And here we are, 80 years later.
References
Carleton, M. T. (1990). Rev. of Death by Installments: The Ordeal of Willie Francis. The American Journal of Legal History, 34(1), 74–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/845349
Jacobs, Don. (1995, January 20). Alleged killers held ‘soul captive’ piece of skull tied to occult events at Job Corps. Knoxville News Sentinel. https://archive.knoxnews.com/news/local/alleged-killers-held-soul-captive-piece-of-skull-tied-to-occult-events-at-job-corps-ep-894252025-353645561.html