Attorneys for Christa Pike say she is alive and in critical condition after a failed execution at a Tennessee prison on Wednesday.
Pike, 50, received 2 lethal injections of pentobarbital, a barbiturate normally used to euthanize animals. She fell into a coma and could be heard snoring loudly in the death chamber.
“Christa is alive right now. We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” Lawyer Randy Spivey said during a news conference on Thursday. “But we know she is alive right now and receiving live-saving medical care.”
Pike’s lawyers said her execution was “torture” and they called for the Tennessee governor to commute her death sentence.
A witness to the execution said Pike raised her head after receiving the first dose of pentobarbital and told the doctor her arm felt like it was about to burst. She asked the doctor if her arm should feel that way.
Pike received a second dose of pentobarbital and she began to snore loudly.
Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion to stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and the procedure violated her right to be executed without cruel and unusual punishment.
After she received the second dose of pentobarbital, prison staff closed the curtain between the execution chamber and the witness chamber. Witnesses said she continued to snore loudly behind the curtain.
Pike was rushed to a local hospital by ambulance. Her location is unknown.
In 1996, Pike, then 20, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her romantic rival, Colleen Slemmer, 19.
Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, was sentenced to life in prison. He was denied parole in October 2025.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he called for an independent investigation into what went wrong on Thursday. He also postponed the execution of convicted killer Gary Wayne Sutton that was scheduled for December 3.
State officials said they followed Tennessee’s single drug execution protocol.