Christa Pike and her botched execution in Tennessee.
“Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system.”
This is the most recent update from her lawyers about the status of death-row inmate Christa Pike.
There’s more here. And the latest court filing here.
The state of Tennessee was supposed to kill her Wednesday night. After the usual stay and SCOTUS rejection, her execution went forward. Except it was botched.
And not for the first time in Tennessee this year. By the same doctor.
That is after being warned about physical circumstances that could lead to something “cruel and unusual.” Pike herself had argued in court
that her individual physical characteristics, including thrombocytosis, post traumatic stress disorder, and small veins “make it sure or very likely that there is a substantial risk that she will experience unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace.” . . . She alleged that her conditions would make it “significantly more difficult to achieve and/or maintain the peripheral IV access . . . needed to ensure proper delivery of the pentobarbital.” . . . She also alleged that she had a “history of difficulty with blood draws and needle insertion.”
Pike was going to be the first woman executed in the state in over 200 years and the first person “in the modern era who was a teenager at the time of the offense,” according to her clemency petition.
This is barbaric.
People push back at me for saying such a thing. Have I forgotten what she was convicted of?
No, I haven’t. It was a demonic torture. And it is not excusing it away by saying it was done by an 18-year-old who we now know had been subjected to all kinds of abuse from her earliest days, as well as living with then-undiagnosed and untreated mental conditions. We cannot say any of those things about the state of Tennessee.
As I’ve mentioned: I don’t believe there is a circumstance in the United States in this day and age that warrants the death penalty. Like with just war, I think there could be a moral case and time. Not this time. Life in prison will do just fine. Living with knowing is punishment, it’s also an opportunity for redemption. And healing, in the case of severe mental illness and trauma. And, there is real, actual trauma in the world, even if people abuse and misuse the word to mean having to listen to Fox News or whatever we call MSNBC now — or vice versa.
That said: I also cannot imagine what it must be like right now for May Martinez. She is Colleen Slemmer’s mother. Maybe you do not know who Colleen Slemmer was. That’s certainly one of Martinez’s concerns — that no one remembers her daughter, who was tortured and killed by Christa Pike in 1995. Had she lived, Slemmer would have just turned 51.
As the New York Times puts it:
Decades after Ms. Slemmer’s name became a national headline, May Martinez, her mother, remembers her as a vibrant and generous presence, who volunteered at the Special Olympics, loved bowling and was interested in computers. She was easygoing, often smiling and enjoyed roller skating, Ms. Martinez told a local news outlet in Nashville.
Slemmer was in the Job Corps when she was brought to a wooded area on the University of Tennessee’s campus.
One profile explained:
“Colleen loved doing things. She babysat. She loved to do anything with kids, and I think it was part of me because I had daycare for 40 years,” Martinez recalled in an interview with WVLT News in October 2025.
That desire to serve extended into her community. Slemmer volunteered with the Special Olympics, dedicating her time to supporting children with special needs. Teachers remembered her as sweet, quiet and mild-mannered, while friends and loved ones often highlighted her independence and innate impulse to help anyone in need.
Beyond volunteering, Slemmer discovered a major passion: computers.
Determined to turn that interest into a lifelong profession, she enrolled in Job Corps, a federal career-training program, to pursue computing. At 19 years old, her independent spirit led her to make a bold move, leaving her Florida hometown to study at the Job Corps center in Knoxville.
Back in 1995, after killing Slemmer, “later that night,” according to court documents, Pike bragged about it, telling a fellow Knoxville Job Corps Center classmate “that she had cut the victim’s throat six times, beaten her, and thrown asphalt at the victim’s head.”
Pike said that Slemmer “begged” Pike and her accomplices to stop “cutting and beating her, but [Pike] did not stop because the victim continued to talk.” Pike, who said “she had brought back a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir,” also relayed that she “had thrown a large piece of asphalt at the victim’s head, and when it broke into smaller pieces, she had thrown those at the victim as well.”
Pike said
that a meat cleaver had been used to cut the victim’s back and a box cutter had been used to cut her throat. Finally, [Pike] said that a pentagram had been carved onto the victim’s forehead and chest. Iloilo said that [Pike] was dancing in a circle, smiling, and singing “la, la, la” while she related these details about the murder.
At breakfast the next morning, Pike said the piece of Slemmer’s skull was in her pocket: “Yes, I’m eating breakfast with it,” she said. Later that morning, she pointed out the brown spots on her shoes to another classmate and said: “That ain’t mud on my shoes, that’s blood.” Pike said “that the victim’s blood and brains had been pouring out and that she had picked up the piece of skull when she left the scene.”
Pike has been since diagnosed with bipolar disorder and found to have brain damage that would have occurred in her mother’s womb — that would have impacted her moral development. There is both evidence and reports of sexual and other physical abuse she suffered since childhood.
As I’ve said, I don’t see how the death penalty is necessary in modern America. But even if you do not agree with me: We should not be executing people with brain damage and with severe mental illness. Or who were severely abused as children.
Child abuse happens when adults fail children. When they directly inflict pain on them, are indifferent to harm others are doing to them, or when they have not adequately protected them.
Someone who was failed by the adults in her life from the beginning should not then be killed by the government.
And then, of course, to make matters worse, when the state tried to kill her, it wound up sending her to a hospital for lifesaving care instead.
This has clearly been cruel and unusual.
The clemency petition for Pike said she has “exhibit[ed] deep remorse for killing Colleen Slemmer and the impact of her actions on Colleen’s family and friends.”
It is not forgetting Colleen Slemmer or excusing away the brutality — facts — of her murder to say that what has happened to Christa Pike is also evil.
And saying the United States is above capital punishment is not to open our land to a free-for-all of heinous crimes. It’s to recognize that we are not meant to do heinous things in the name of justice. It’s still not clear that this execution attempt won’t end in her death — as she remains in such critical condition. This, once again, should be a moment for a cultural examination of conscience. Why are we killing the disabled? Why are we killing anyone when we don’t have to?
And for those of you in favor of the death penalty, I’ll add for you: Why are we trying to kill people when we apparently don’t even know how to do it effectively? This is embarrassing in addition to horrific.