Tennessee governor halts executions after female inmate survives lethal injection attempt

Media witnesses detail the execution process

Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” she said in her “last” words. She described herself as at peace.

But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.

By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and a district court.

It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

Stay of execution was swiftly appealed

Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

Case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”

Victim’s mother says she is waiting for death sentence

Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment after the execution was halted.

The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Executions of women are rare in the US

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.