Lawyers for Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, say she is conscious and “speaking” in hospital six days after surviving a lethal injection attempt at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on September 30, according to ABC News. A court hearing on preserving evidence from the failed execution was scheduled for 11am on October 7 local time, with US legal experts telling the broadcaster that any second attempt would be “uncharted territory”.
Key facts
- Pike, 50, received two doses of pentobarbital, the single drug in Tennessee’s protocol, and remained alive, according to ABC News.
- Governor Bill Lee has halted all remaining executions in the state for 2026 and ordered a third-party review, to be led by former US Attorney Ed Stanton.
- Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, is resigning this month.
- Pike’s lawyers want her sentence commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
- Earlier accounts of her condition differed: Mint and newstalk987 reported her unconscious and on a ventilator on October 3 and 4.
- Had the drugs killed her, she would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries, Mint reported, and one of only 19 women executed in the US since 1976.
Why it matters here
The Pike case reaches Fijian readers as comparative law rather than domestic politics, and for two concrete reasons. It is the clearest recent test of whether a US state can carry out an execution the way its own written protocol says it will — the question Stanton’s review will now answer on the record. And Fijians studying, working and living in the United States remain subject to the criminal justice system now under examination. It sits with our other Fiji News world coverage and Fiji current affairs coverage.
Fiji’s legal position
No Fijian court can impose a death sentence for any offence, civil or military, and the right to life is entrenched in section 8 of the 2013 Constitution. For Fiji, then, the US argument over execution methods is a question of international human rights policy, not of domestic sentencing practice.
According to newstalk987, legal advocates, death penalty opponents, human rights organisations and international bodies have criticised the state’s execution process.
Paul Lucas, an associate professor at East Carolina University, told ABC News the long-term ramifications could extend “beyond Tennessee”, giving courts, policymakers and other states a real-world example through which to evaluate lethal injection procedures. He added that changes in public attitudes do not by themselves determine that an execution method is unconstitutional.
What Pike’s lawyers say went wrong
Her legal team alleged in an emergency court filing that at least seven syringes were used in attempts to establish an IV line, and that no member of the execution team realised the lines were incorrectly placed or that the veins had blown, ABC News reported. Her attorneys believe the pentobarbital flowed into her body rather than her bloodstream, according to Mint. ABC News reported that what exactly went wrong remains unclear, and that experts have speculated the drug entered the tissue in her arm.
Mint reported that lawyer Randy Spivey told reporters Pike was extraordinarily cooperative with the execution team. Witnesses said she remained awake longer than expected before an ambulance took her to hospital; newstalk987 named the hospital as Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The state’s response
The Tennessee Department of Correction said staff “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office”, according to NewsNation. Strada said he continued to believe the department acted in accordance with that protocol, but that resigning was in the best interest of Tennesseans while the review proceeds.
Lee said he appreciated Strada’s “willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment”, Mint reported. An interim commissioner is to be announced. Pike’s four-lawyer team welcomed the departure but said it “does nothing to help Christa now”, calling the failure a systemic one.
The independent review
Stanton is not new to the task: Mint reported he was appointed to examine a Tennessee execution called off in 2022 and found the state had not complied with its own lethal injection process. Pike’s attorneys have separately asked a court to order officials to preserve evidence related to the September 30 attempt.
Can the state try again?
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told USA Today that the US Supreme Court has not decided whether a second execution attempt would violate the Constitution since 1947, ABC News reported. Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law School professor, told CNN that giving Pike life in prison seemed “the most obvious recourse”, and that a further attempt would be “highly problematic”.
Lucas said he was hesitant to predict the state’s next step, citing unresolved questions about Pike’s medical condition and the review’s findings, and expected substantial litigation if another execution were sought. Austin Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College, told NewsNation he does not see the failure as a watershed, saying states usually add execution methods rather than replace them.
Background
NewsNation reported Pike and her then-boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 fatal beating and stabbing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a job-training program in Knoxville; newstalk987 named co-accused Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson. Pike was 18 at the time, and Denno told NewsNation that substantial evidence of physical and sexual abuse was not presented at her trial.
Editor’s note: three of the four outlets reviewed for this brief date the killing to 1995; ABC News places it in 1996. The 1995 date is the one carried by the majority of the reporting and is used here.
Members of Slemmer’s family have publicly said they are frustrated Pike survived, newstalk987 reported, having expected closure more than three decades after the murder. Several Tennessee political leaders indicated lawmakers will examine execution procedures when the General Assembly reconvenes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has anyone else survived a lethal injection attempt in the United States?
The Death Penalty Information Center, a US non-profit that tracks capital punishment, told ABC News that Pike would be the first person to survive the administration of lethal injection drugs. Fordham University School of Law professor Deborah Denno told NewsNation that Pike is the eighth person to survive a failed lethal-injection execution attempt since the method was first used in the US in 1982.
Does Fiji still have the death penalty?
No. Capital punishment was removed for murder by amendment to Fiji’s Penal Code in 1979, and the last remaining capital provision — covering offences under the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Act — was repealed in 2015. Those dates come from Fiji’s statute record and are reflected in the abolitionist country lists maintained by Amnesty International and in the UN Secretary-General’s periodic reports on capital punishment, not from the US outlets cited in this brief.
What happened in the Tony Carruthers case earlier this year?
ABC News reported that Carruthers’ execution was called off in May after medical personnel could not establish an intravenous line following more than an hour of trying. Mint reported that officials placed an IV in his right arm but could not get a secondary line, and that Governor Lee ordered officials to wait at least a year before trying again. Carruthers was sentenced to death for a 1994 triple murder, according to ABC News.
How often have US lethal injections gone wrong, according to researchers?
NewsNation reported that the Death Penalty Information Center found seven of 20 execution attempts in 2022 — 35 per cent — were visibly problematic. Amherst College professor Austin Sarat, in a separate study of executions from 1982 to 2010, classified 75 of 1,054 lethal injections, or 7.2 per cent, as botched, the highest rate of any method he examined.
