Tennessee governor halts executions after Christa Gail Pike survives lethal injection attempt

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee officials were unable to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday for a murder committed in 1995 after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert declared it to be an unprecedented failure, and Governor Bill Lee subsequently halted the remaining execution for the remainder of the year.

The 50-year-old Pike was still alive and snoring loudly after the attempted lethal injection, leading her attorneys to transport her via ambulance to the hospital, where they had not yet received updates on her condition. Pike, who was set for execution at 10 a.m., would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years.

An appeals court intervened an hour before the lethal injection was to begin, and the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned that stay. Following the incident, officials administered two doses of pentobarbital to Pike, as represented in court filings filed by her legal team late on Wednesday. Governor Lee declared in a statement that he had ordered a comprehensive, third-party review to ascertain the exact circumstances surrounding the event.