On September 30, 2026, Tennessee tried to execute a woman for the first time in more than two centuries. Behind a curtain in Nashville, officials gave Christa Pike two doses of pentobarbital. Witnesses on the other side could still hear her snoring. She survived.
Her death sentence stems from a crime no one disputes. In January 1995, Pike was 18. She and her boyfriend lured her classmate Colleen Slemmer, 19, to a steam plant on the University of Tennessee campus. They killed her. Pike has not denied responsibility. Slemmer’s mother has spoken out in support of the execution.
For three decades, the case has pulled two ways. One side sees a brutal killing and a family that has waited nearly thirty years. The other sees a teenager whose lawyers say she endured years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect. The jury that sentenced her largely never heard that history. Then came the failed execution, which a death penalty expert called unprecedented. The governor suspended all executions this year.
Pike is now back in the women’s prison where she spent thirty years. This post traces how she got there. It covers who she was before the crime, what happened to Colleen Slemmer, and what went wrong in the chamber.
A childhood of harm
Everything in this section comes from Pike’s defense team, advocates and clemency filings. The sentencing jury never heard the details of her upbringing.
Advocates describe an “almost unbearably abusive background,” including child sexual abuse, multiple rapes, and abandonment. Her father barely took part in her life. She spent most of her childhood moving around, especially in Durham, North Carolina. Later, her mother’s male partners began abusing her too. At twelve, she first attempted suicide.
Supporters also argue that her brain suffered damage before birth. A site run by her advocates says her mother’s drinking during pregnancy caused organic brain damage and a brain malformation. It adds that she developed bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress without proper treatment. Those are the defense’s claims, not findings of fact.
One more event matters to that account. Pike spent time in a juvenile center and was released in March 1993. At 17, a year before the murder, she told North Carolina police that a man threw her to the ground and raped her. She later enrolled in a Job Corps program in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Job Corps and Tadaryl Shipp
Job Corps promised a fresh start. Her advocates say it delivered the opposite: a culture of violence where students routinely carried razor blades and box cutters for protection. There, she quickly fell into an intense relationship with Tadaryl Shipp. Colleen Slemmer, meanwhile, studied computer technology there at her grandfather’s suggestion. She had a real aptitude for computers.
January 12, 1995
Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival. That night, Pike, Shipp and their friend Shadolla Peterson left the dormitory with Slemmer. They led her to a steam plant on the University of Tennessee campus. Pike and Shipp attacked her while Peterson stood watch.
Prosecutors say Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp has admitted that he carved a pentagram into her body. Pike told police something different. She said she wanted only to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in a frenzied attack. Her clemency petition argues that untreated mental illness left her unable to “put the brakes on.”
What happened afterward deepened the revulsion the case drew. By morning, Pike was showing classmates a fragment of Slemmer’s skull that she had taken from the scene. Police soon found her, and she admitted the next day that she had killed Slemmer.
Two very different sentences
A jury convicted Pike in 1996 and sentenced her to death. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence. The outcome has stayed contentious ever since. Pike’s supporters see a teenager with a documented abuse history and brain impairment. In their view, she drew a death sentence while her co-defendant did not. Slemmer’s family sees a young woman who never got to grow up. Her mother says she has waited decades to see the sentence carried out.
Pike also drew a 2004 conviction for trying to strangle a fellow inmate during a prison fight. It added 25 years to her sentence. Her lawyers say she has since become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse.
September 30, 2026
A day of legal whiplash
Officials scheduled the execution for 10 a.m. An appeals court halted it an hour before it was due to begin. Hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way. In the weeks before, her lawyers had warned the state about her history of difficult vein access. They also sued over her medical conditions.
Inside the chamber
Media witnesses watched through a window with curtains. The IV lines ran through a wall into a hidden chamber where staff administered the drugs. Officials raised the curtains at about 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney. Her lawyer Randy Spivey says she cooperated with the execution team and even told them where to try the IV lines. He says the team spent an hour trying and used at least seven needles. One needle appeared bent when staff pulled it from her arm.
Pike stayed awake and described herself as at peace. Then things went wrong. She complained that her arm felt like it was about to burst open. Witnesses heard her say one spot was throbbing. At one point, she raised her head and asked officials whether her arm should feel that way.
The snoring
The curtains closed about five minutes after the first dose. Witnesses kept hearing sounds from the chamber. They repeatedly asked staff to open the curtains because they could still hear her snoring. About an hour after the curtains first rose, witnesses reported a second, backup dose. The loud breathing continued. More than an hour into the process, and nearly 30 minutes after the backup dose, she was still audible. At one point, she raised her head slightly and turned it to the side. News outlets report slightly different timestamps, so treat the clock times as approximate.
What her lawyers and the state say
Her attorneys filed an emergency motion describing needless agony. It said pentobarbital is caustic and burns on contact. It also said both of her arms were swollen, burned and blistered when she reached the hospital. They argued that the execution team apparently failed to realize the IV lines were misplaced or the veins had blown. In their account, the drug entered her body outside her veins, in whole or in part. A University of Tennessee anesthesiologist offered a similar explanation. The doctor said the needle likely never made it properly into a vein.
The state disagrees. The Department of Correction says it followed every step of the established protocol. At the time, officials had not explained what went wrong.
The aftermath
- The hospital. An ambulance took her to a hospital, where she lay unconscious on a ventilator. Spivey said he understood her to be brain dead, with plans to withdraw life support the next day. She woke up. She also had pneumonia, a blood clot in one arm, and trouble swallowing.
- The recovery. About three weeks later, her lawyers said she was speaking in full sentences and walking better without help. Doctors still monitor her cognitive and psychological functioning. She has returned to the women’s prison where she spent 30 years.
- The state’s response. The governor suspended all executions this year and called for a third-party review. The head of the prison system has resigned. A judge ordered the Department of Correction to preserve all evidence from the failed execution.
- What’s next. Her lawyers called it torture and have renewed their request for commutation. One poll cited in coverage found about a third of respondents would back a second attempt. Whether Tennessee tries again remains unresolved.
The questions left standing
Pike never denied what she did, and no one disputes the facts of Colleen Slemmer’s death. The disagreement centers on what a just response looks like. She was 18, had a documented history of abuse and untreated mental illness, and faced a sentencing jury that heard little of it. The question also reaches the state itself. What does it owe anyone, the condemned included, when a punishment fails?
