Christa Pike unconscious and on a ventilator after failed execution
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Oct. 2, 2026, 3:03 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 2, 2026, 6:18 PM EDT
Christa Pike, the woman who survived an execution attempt in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, her lawyers said in a new statement Friday.
She is unconscious, intubated and breathing through a ventilator. The death row inmate is also being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her.
At one point, Pike said it felt like her arm was exploding, and she could be heard whimpering, according to her legal team.
“We are working closely with those closest to Christa to respect her wishes, safeguard her privacy and protect her rights as a patient during this extraordinarily difficult time,” attorney Luke Ihnen said in a statement. “We ask that the public and the media respect that privacy as well.”
The state of Tennessee attempted to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18.
Pike, now 50, has been on death row for decades and would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.
NBC News earlier reported that there was no emergency medical oxygen in the execution room in case something went wrong. Medical professionals had to retrieve it from elsewhere.
Pike’s attorneys detailed her condition in a new emergency motion filed Friday asking the state to preserve all evidence from the failed execution attempt.
“In the words of one media witness: we have a lot of questions and the Department of Correction has a lot of answers that it needs to provide to the public about what happened here. We agree,” the motion reads.
In their filing, the lawyers described a painful and chaotic scene that unfolded in front of several witnesses, and that they said could have been prevented with the proper care and training.
Medical staff failed to follow basic protocol, like ensuring the needles used were fresh, functional and inserted properly, according to the motion. Further, the state did not heed Pike’s concerns prior to the procedure that preexisting medical conditions could make lethal injection difficult to complete, the motion says.
The motion accuses the department of corrections of “inflicting a cruel and unusual punishment on Ms. Pike through its deliberate indifference to her basic medical needs and reckless disregard of basic medical practices and their own lethal injection protocol.”
Christa Pike in 2023. Tennessee Dept. of Correction
The Tennessee Attorney General did not immediately return a request for comment on the new filing. A spokesperson for the state department of corrections said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
At a news conference Thursday, Stephen Ferrell and another of Pike’s attorneys, Randall Spivey, detailed how the execution attempt went wrong. Spivey, who was in the room, recalled Pike saying she was in pain, and like she felt like her arm was about to “explode.”
“It’s not supposed to be a cruel and an unusual execution,” criminologist Deborah Denno told NBC News. “The goal is to kill somebody, but to kill them within means or in a reasonable way, where there’s not going to be pain and suffering.”
According to Friday’s filing, the execution process lasted longer than two hours. Pike’s legal team filed emergency motions to halt the execution in multiple courts before the prison called an ambulance.
“Even then,” it continues, “attorneys for the State of Tennessee argued that TDOC had no obligation to render life-saving care to Ms. Pike.”
NBC News contributor Dr. Natalie Azar, a rheumatologist, said the pain Pike described could be attributed to pentobarbital flowing into her arm instead of straight into her veins. That would be painful with any medication, Azar said, but the specific properties of pentobarbital would make the experience exceptionally uncomfortable.
The scenario would also result in Pike being administered a less-than-lethal dose. It was enough to suppress her respiratory system but not enough to kill her, Azar explained. The question of how long Pike’s brain was deprived on oxygen will be central to her prognosis.
“There is no reversal of pentobarbital. There is no medicine or antidote,” she said. “You have to basically wait for the liver to metabolize the drug and get it out of your system.”
Pike was convicted in the 1995 murder case. She and two other teenage accomplices worked together to torture, slash and fatally beat Colleen Slemmer, Knoxville police said at the time. Pike was sentenced to death. A number of last-minute legal efforts to stop Pike’s execution were unsuccessful.
