Whether Tennessee tries to execute Christa Pike again is an open question. Here’s why
By Nicki Brown, CNN
(CNN) — Only a week after Christa Pike survived a failed execution, her attorneys appeared in a Nashville courthouse to take the first steps in what will likely be a protracted legal battle to prevent a second attempt to put her to death.
Though Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee postponed executions while officials conduct an independent review of her botched lethal injection, Pike’s attorneys are already preparing for state officials to move forward.
“The state has made no promises that Ms. Pike will not be subject to a future execution,” Pike’s attorney Luke Ihnen said in court last Wednesday, as her team argued for the preservation of evidence from the failed execution, which saw Pike survive two ostensibly fatal doses of pentobarbital.
Whether Tennessee will again attempt to execute Pike – who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer – remains an open question that could be answered by a judicial ruling or the governor’s intervention.
The hearing last week was only the beginning of what could be a lengthy struggle between the state and Pike’s attorneys. But the novel circumstances of Pike’s case could help her attorneys make strong legal arguments to stave off a second attempt, experts told CNN – such as claiming it would violate her constitutional protections against double jeopardy and cruel and unusual punishment.
“Christa Pike is the only one in which they actually injected lethal injection chemicals,” said Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Policy Project and adjunct professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law. “In all the other failed executions, the executions were stopped after prison personnel were unable to set lethal injection lines.”
Pike’s was not even Tennessee’s only failed execution in recent memory: Earlier this year, the state halted the execution of Tony Carruthers after struggling to establish IV access.
In Pike’s case, officials similarly spent more than an hour trying to establish IV access, using at least seven needles.
But unlike Carruthers, Pike was injected with the drugs.
Pike was transported to a hospital, where her attorneys said she remained unconscious for days. Though Pike’s lawyers announced Saturday she had been discharged from the hospital and returned to prison, her legal team previously cautioned the scope of her injuries remains unclear.
“It’s an embarrassment for the state of Tennessee that after trying to kill her, they had to go to the hospital and give her lifesaving care,” said Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the book “Secrets of the Killing State: the Untold Story of Lethal Injection.”
“This whole thing is a real mess for Tennessee.”
Case raises key constitutional questions
If officials were to pursue another execution attempt, the Tennessee attorney general would have to ask the state’s supreme court to set an execution date.
For the execution to proceed, experts noted Pike would first have to be found competent to be put to death, which requires a person to be aware of and understand the reason for the punishment.
Pike’s attorneys have provided some details about her medical status, but the full extent of her injuries and the intensity of her recovery remain largely uncertain.
“Christa is dealing with the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution, including the terror, pain and uncertainty of believing she was about to die,” her attorneys wrote in a statement Thursday. At that time, Pike was still struggling with concentration and memory, and her lawyers said it could take months to determine if she has lasting cognitive injuries.
Any potential impairments could affect her competency, Dunham said.
“We don’t know to what degree there may be brain damage,” he told CNN in an interview prior to Pike’s discharge from the hospital. “We don’t know to what degree this is going to affect her mental health, and whether her mental health will deteriorate significantly if there’s another attempt to execute her.”
If Pike is found to be competent, experts said her attorneys could argue a second execution attempt would violate her constitutional protections against double jeopardy, which prevent individuals from being prosecuted or punished for the same crime twice.
Dunham pointed to the landmark case of Willie Francis, a 16-year-old who survived an execution in 1946 after Louisiana’s electric chair malfunctioned. Francis argued a second execution would amount to double jeopardy and cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court, however, rejected his arguments and allowed him to be put to death, writing, “Accidents happen for which no man is to blame.”
But the issues in Pike’s case were not caused by accidents and were foreseeable, experts said: Her lawyers previously raised concerns in court filings that lethal injection would cause unnecessary and additional suffering due to her various medical conditions. After the failed execution, the Tennessee Department of Corrections maintained it acted according to its protocol.
“There doesn’t appear to be any ‘malfunctioning’ here,” Dunham said. “Whatever went wrong here, with Tennessee saying that they followed the protocol, was a product of the execution process not working. That’s not an accident.”
Pike’s case also raises the question about when exactly double jeopardy protections come into play, experts said, pointing to the 2009 botched execution of Romell Broom, which failed after Ohio officials were unable to place a viable IV line in his body.
Broom argued a second execution attempt would violate his double jeopardy protections. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected his argument, noting the drugs never entered the IV line and allowing his second execution to proceed.
“The establishment of viable IV lines is a necessary preliminary step, but it does not, by itself, place the prisoner at risk of death,” Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote in the majority opinion, which is not binding on Tennessee courts. “As the statute makes clear, the execution commences when the lethal drug enters the IV line.”
In Pike’s case, however, the drugs were injected into her body.
“When the drugs begin to flow, the punishment has started, and I would say jeopardy attaches when the punishment starts – so you can’t do it again,” said Austin Sarat, an Amherst College professor and author of several books on the death penalty and lethal injection. “Now, others might say, ‘No, double jeopardy has to do when the punishment has been completed.’”
Legal experts said Pike’s legal team could also make a compelling argument that another execution attempt would violate her Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment. Her attorneys would need to show the execution would “superadd” pain, terror or disgrace.
“This certainly looks like something where there has been superadded pain. This is pain that is not incidental to a lethal injection gone right,” Dunham said. “In terms of superadded terror, the mental health implications of having gone through this and having to face it again would, to a layperson, clearly suggest a heightened level of anxiety and terror in a second execution attempt.”
The governor could intervene
The Tennessee governor has the authority to halt state executions. But whether the current or future governor would intervene in Pike’s case is unknown.
After the failed execution, Lee, a Republican, ordered a review and postponed the execution of another death row inmate scheduled for December – the last execution slated to take place during his final term. It’s unclear if the inquiry will be complete before his tenure ends in January.
“If the review is not complete by then, then Governor Lee will have to act according to his conscience,” Dunham said. “Ultimately, he’ll have to act according to his conscience anyway if he chooses to commute, but he may have to act before he knows exactly what went wrong.”
Pike’s attorney has called for the governor to commute her sentence before he leaves office, saying she had endured punishment “greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty.” However, Lee has not granted clemency to any death row inmates, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
If Lee doesn’t take action before leaving office, the issue would be inherited by his successor. The top two candidates in the race have both spoken out about Pike’s case and have drastically different views: Democrat Jerri Green has said she would order a moratorium on executions, while her opponent, Republican US Sen. Marsha Blackburn, said Pike’s death sentence should be carried out, perhaps using another method.
“The answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly,” the senator wrote on X.
In recent years, several states have turned to alternative methods after struggling with lethal injections and fielding concerns about how the drugs are obtained and administered.
“Because lethal injections have become so problematic, states have resurrected old methods: the firing squad, the electric chair – and places like Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, have added nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative,” Sarat said.
Some prisoners who survived initial execution attempts by lethal injection were later put to death by a different method, including Alabama inmate Kenneth Smith, who was the first person to be executed with nitrogen gas after surviving an initial attempt via lethal injection.
Tennessee currently offers the electric chair as an alternative for certain offenders, who can choose electrocution if they committed their crimes before 1999, or if the state is unable to use lethal injection. If Blackburn were elected, it’s unclear if she would push to instate new methods, though Tennessee lawmakers have publicly supported the idea in recent days, according to The Associated Press.
Second attempt could be a ‘public relations nightmare’
Some experts pointed to the outcry surrounding Pike’s failed execution and surmised there could be public backlash if Tennessee’s new administration pursued a second one.
“(Pike’s case) raises the type of moral and political considerations that generally make governors think twice,” Dunham said.
The prospect of a second execution would be a “public relations nightmare” for Tennessee, Lain said.
“The public is already incensed over what happened to her and additional cruelty could swing the public against the death penalty, period,” she told CNN. “You could be shooting yourself in the foot.”
When Pike killed Slemmer in 1995, support for the death penalty was near its peak in the United States, with roughly three-quarters of Americans in favor of capital punishment, according to Gallup polling at the time. But support for the death penalty has largely declined in recent decades, with about half the country indicating support for the death penalty in the most recent data from 2025.
While some people are opposed to the death penalty for moral reasons, Dunham said another sect has reservations stemming from a skepticism that the government can appropriately carry out executions.
“I think that the previous botched and failed executions contribute to that number,” he told CNN. “In a high-profile case like Christa Pike, the fact that Tennessee, on a procedure that was entirely within their control, so badly botched it – this is a failure that will make it into the American consciousness.”
Others, however, have expressed support for Pike’s second execution, with some citing in part the state’s rising bill from the continuation of the case.
“We have paid for Christa Pike, and now we’re paying for attorneys, and now we’re paying for hospital bills, and now they’re talking about lawsuits,” Tennessee resident Michelle Nowell told CNN after the hearing Wednesday. “And the worst part is that Colleen has been forgotten.”
The state may also consider the perspective of the victim’s family: Slemmer’s mother, who traveled from Florida to witness Pike’s execution in Nashville, told CNN affiliate WTLV she feels the state failed her family.
“All I wanted was justice,” May Martinez said.
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