Christa Pike told witnesses in a Nashville execution chamber on Wednesday night, September 30, that she was at peace and ready to be free. Those were meant to be Christa Pike’s final words. Two doses of pentobarbital later, the 50-year-old was still breathing, and before the night was over she had been taken to a hospital.
Her condition was still unknown on Thursday. Gov. Bill Lee told reporters that morning that he did not know how she was doing. Her attorneys said they had not been told her condition either.
A letter written days before
Pike had prepared for the end. In a letter written ahead of the execution, she said: “I am not afraid to die. I’m only nervous about the process.”
She wrote something similar to NBC News before she learned on Monday that Lee would not grant clemency, saying she was at peace whatever he decided. Her spiritual adviser, Rev. Mikey Noechel, received a note from her on Sunday with handwritten lines from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, followed by a letter on Monday.
Christa Pike’s final words in the chamber
Inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Pike spoke before the drug was given. According to the Nashville Banner, she said she would leave the world the way she had lived most of her life, with love. She added that she loved her critics as much as the people closest to her.
She ended on a note few in the room expected. “I’m at peace, I’m ready to be free. This is a happy day,” she said.
Noechel stood beside her. The two shared a short prayer wishing peace and gentleness, and Pike turned the same wish toward the reporters watching through the glass. After her statement, she sang with her spiritual adviser. Several witnesses said they were surprised by her calm.
Pain, then snoring
The mood changed once the injection began. Pike complained about her arm and turned to Noechel. “Does it happen like that?” she asked. He told her to relax. “I’m trying,” she replied, smiling and laughing as a tear ran down her right cheek.
Media witnesses described her breathing heavily and moving her head and legs before she began to snore. At 7:46 p.m. the curtain closed and Noechel was asked to leave. Three minutes later it lifted and he was allowed back in, which suggested the prison planned to try again.
Forty minutes after the first injection, her heart was still beating. In an emergency federal filing, her lawyers told the court that executioners had pushed both syringes but Pike had not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat. The curtain closed for the last time around 8:05 p.m. Witnesses could hear her rhythmic breathing until they were ordered out at about 8:53 p.m.
Several of them stressed afterward that they could not see enough to say what had gone wrong.
What her lawyers and the victim’s family say
Pike’s legal team is now demanding an immediate halt to her sentence and argues she was put through needless suffering. In a statement, the lawyers said the problems they had warned about came true, listing hard-to-access veins, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital and no emergency medical care on hand.
Colleen Slemmer’s family sees it differently. Her mother, May Martinez, called the failed execution “a mess.” Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the torture and murder of Slemmer, who was 19 when she was killed in 1995.
In a court filing, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office said only that Pike was receiving medical care, without naming the hospital. The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed at 11:12 p.m. that she had been moved to a medical facility.
Had the execution gone ahead, Pike would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years. Instead, Lee has ordered a third-party review and called off the state’s one remaining execution scheduled for 2026.
