Christa Pike Survives Failed Lethal Injection in Tennessee
- Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, survived an execution attempt on Wednesday evening after two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her.
- Pike’s legal team had filed urgent appeals leading up to the scheduled execution, arguing that she was a mentally ill 18-year-old at the time of the crime and...
- The execution stems from the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee, a crime that drew widespread attention during the height of public anxiety surrounding satanism...
Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, survived an execution attempt on Wednesday evening after two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. According to her attorneys, Pike became unconscious but maintained a heartbeat and began audibly snoring during the procedure in Nashville before the execution was stopped and she was transferred to a hospital for emergency medical treatment.
Legal Challenges and Execution Delay
Pike’s legal team had filed urgent appeals leading up to the scheduled execution, arguing that she was a mentally ill 18-year-old at the time of the crime and that trial jurors never heard crucial mitigating evidence regarding childhood sexual abuse. In her clemency petition, Pike wrote that she was a mentally ill 18-year-old child when the offense occurred. Tennessee’s governor declined to grant clemency earlier in the week, clearing the path for the state to proceed with the lethal injection.
The 1995 Murder of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville
The execution stems from the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee, a crime that drew widespread attention during the height of public anxiety surrounding satanism in the 1980s and 1990s. Prosecutors established that Pike, alongside her boyfriend, tortured and killed Slemmer by cutting her with a carpet knife and striking her with a large piece of asphalt. A pentagram—a star-shaped symbol associated with satanism—was carved into the victim’s body, which Pike’s boyfriend admitted to doing. Pike was subsequently sentenced to death in 1996.
Impact on the Victim’s Family
May Martinez, the mother of Colleen Slemmer, traveled from Florida to Tennessee to witness the scheduled execution. Martinez told the Associated Press that not a single day passes without her thinking of her daughter, noting that holidays are the worst as the family waited for the execution of the sentence since 1995.