Survived execution: Pike’s stunning case and 8 before it

Christa Pike survived execution on Wednesday night, Sept. 30, when Tennessee gave her two doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and she was still breathing when witnesses were led out, The Associated Press reported. Pike, 50, was taken to a hospital. As of Thursday morning, Oct. 1, the state had not disclosed her condition, CBS News reported.

A handful of U.S. prisoners have survived execution attempts. But experts say Pike’s case stands apart, and it leaves Tennessee facing questions with few clear answers.

Why Pike’s case is different

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the situation “singular and unparalleled,” the AP reported. She said other prisoners who survived execution attempts did so because officials could not get an IV line working, not after the lethal drugs had been given.

Pike’s lawyers said in an emergency court filing that after both doses she still had a heartbeat, had not lost consciousness and was “audibly snoring,” according to CBS News. The Tennessee Department of Correction said only that Pike had been “transported to an off-site medical facility.”

Who else survived execution in the U.S.?

The Death Penalty Information Center documents several prisoners who survived execution attempts that were halted midway. In nearly every modern case, the problem was finding a vein:

• Willie Francis (Louisiana, 1946): The electric chair failed to kill the 17-year-old. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 1947 that a second attempt was not cruel and unusual punishment, and Louisiana executed him that year.
• Romell Broom (Ohio, 2009): The execution team spent more than two hours trying to find a usable vein before the governor stopped it. Broom died of COVID-19 on death row in December 2020.
• Alva Campbell (Ohio, 2017): Officials called off the execution after about 80 minutes of failed IV attempts. Campbell died of medical conditions in March 2018.
• Doyle Lee Hamm (Alabama, 2018): Staff made repeated needle attempts over about 2 1/2 hours before the execution was halted. Hamm died of lymphoma in prison in 2021.
• Alan Miller (Alabama, 2022): The execution was stopped after roughly 90 minutes of failed IV attempts. Alabama later agreed to use nitrogen gas for any future execution and carried it out in 2024.
• Kenneth Eugene Smith (Alabama, 2022): Officials could not set a second IV line before the warrant expired at midnight. In January 2024, Alabama made Smith the first person in the U.S. executed with nitrogen gas.
• Thomas Creech (Idaho, 2024): The team failed eight times to place a working IV, and the warden halted the attempt after nearly an hour.
• Tony Carruthers (Tennessee, 2026): In May, officials could not set a backup IV line after about 90 minutes, and Gov. Bill Lee granted a one-year reprieve, according to the DPIC.

Botched executions are not new. Research by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat, cited by the DPIC, found that 3.15 percent of U.S. executions from 1890 to 2010 were botched, and lethal injection had the highest rate of any method at 7.2 percent.

Survived execution: What happens next?

There is no single rule. The Francis case established that a state can try again, and Alabama did so with both Smith and Miller using a new method. In other cases, prisoners died on death row before another date was set.

For Pike, the next steps are unsettled. Lee ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and called off the one other execution Tennessee had scheduled for 2026, CBS News reported. Pike’s lawyers filed emergency motions in the Tennessee Supreme Court, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and federal district court, arguing she suffered “unnecessary agony” in violation of protections against cruel and unusual punishment, according to the AP.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith told Al Jazeera it is uncertain whether Pike will return to death row.

The crime behind the case

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, a fellow student at the Job Corps center in Knoxville, in January 1995. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996, while Shipp received life with the possibility of parole. Had the execution been completed, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

For the full account of Wednesday’s events, read our report on how the Christa Pike execution failed and our breakdown of the Christa Pike appeal across three courts. Find more in our special interests coverage.