Tennessee governor halts executions for rest of 2026 after Christa Pike survives lethal injection

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted the state’s remaining 2026 execution and ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” after officials failed to put 50-year-old Christa Pike to death on Wednesday despite two doses of pentobarbital (AP).

A death penalty expert called it “an unprecedented failure” (AP). Pike was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted injection and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, her attorneys said, adding: “Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital. We have not been informed as to her condition” (CNA).

Lee said: “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” (AP). Tennessee’s protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set, but says nothing about what to do if the inmate survives the second set; the state corrections department said it “followed every step” of its protocol (AP).

Pike was scheduled for execution on Sept. 30 for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. The Sixth Circuit stayed the execution an hour before it was to begin; the U.S. Supreme Court cleared it to proceed, with the three liberal justices dissenting (AP; CNA).