Christa Pike: When Government Executions Fail, Should Prisoners Walk Free?

 

Christa Pike’s botched execution exposes America’s deadly hypocrisy! The government tried to kill her, failed, then saved her! Now it wants another shot? Outrageous! This isn't a video game!

I have a question for the great state of Tennessee. How many times does the government get to try to kill somebody before somebody finally says, “Enough”?

Seriously. Is this the American justice system or some twisted video game where the executioner keeps hitting the restart button until the prisoner finally dies?

Because what allegedly happened to Christa Pike on September 30, 2026, sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood horror movie. Except this wasn't Hollywood. This was Tennessee. Real needles. Real lethal drugs. Real human flesh. And a government that apparently couldn't finish the very job it had spent decades preparing to do.

According to the October 6 USA TODAY account by Amanda Lee Myers, Tennessee attempted to execute Pike, 50, for the horrific 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Executioners reportedly administered two doses of pentobarbital. Pike didn't die. After more than an hour of trying to execute her, medical personnel rushed to save her life.

Think about that for a moment.

The government tried to kill her. Failed. Then scrambled to keep her alive.

What the hell kind of justice is that?

I can almost imagine the conversation inside that execution chamber.

“Is she dead?”

“No, sir.”

“Did we give her the lethal drugs?”

“Yes, sir. Twice.”

“Well, what now?”

“Call an ambulance!”

You couldn't make this stuff up. And if you did, Hollywood producers would probably reject the script for being too ridiculous. But the most disturbing part isn't simply that Pike reportedly survived. It's that Tennessee could attempt to execute her again.

Yes. Again.

As though the first execution were a practice round. As though the government were playing a video game and had another life waiting in reserve. As though the Constitution were some inconvenient instruction manual that could be tossed aside whenever the executioner misses his target.

I don't buy it.

I believe that if a prisoner survives a lethal injection, that prisoner should never face another execution. Period.

The government had its shot. Literally. And it messed  it up.

You don't get to keep trying until you finally get it right. This isn't a video game.

Now, before somebody accuses me of defending murder, let me make something absolutely clear. Christa Pike was convicted of a monstrous crime. According to prosecutors, she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, lured Colleen Slemmer into the woods in Knoxville in January 1995. Slemmer was tortured and murdered. Her throat was cut. Her skull was crushed with a rock.

There is nothing funny about that.

Nothing.

Colleen Slemmer was 19. She had a life ahead of her. Her mother, May Martinez, has endured decades of grief that no court ruling, prison sentence, or execution can erase.

I am not asking anybody to forget Colleen. I am not asking anybody to forgive Pike. I am asking whether a government that claims to administer justice should be allowed to turn punishment into repeated experiments in killing. Because there is a difference between holding a murderer accountable and giving the government unlimited opportunities to carry out a failed execution.

And that difference matters.

And Christa Pike isn't the first prisoner to expose the ugly machinery behind America's supposedly humane executions.

Consider Willie Francis.

In 1946, Louisiana strapped Francis, a 17-year-old Black teenager, into an electric chair nicknamed Gruesome Gertie. The state flipped the switch. Electricity surged through his body. But Francis survived.

Imagine that.

A teenager strapped into an electric chair, expecting death, feeling the electricity, and discovering that the machine had failed to finish him.

You might think the state would have considered that enough punishment for one human being.

Not Louisiana.

The government wanted another attempt.

Francis challenged the decision, and the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In January 1947, the Court ruled that Louisiana could try again. The justices treated the malfunction as an accident rather than an unconstitutional second punishment.

Francis was executed on May 9, 1947.

So much for surviving the electric chair.

I find that ruling deeply disturbing. The Court's reasoning effectively allowed the government to repeat an execution after its machinery failed. But the Constitution is supposed to restrain government power, not hand the executioner a permission slip for another round.

And there is an important legal problem here. The Supreme Court's 1947 ruling remains a serious obstacle to any claim that surviving an execution automatically creates a constitutional right to freedom. I am arguing for a new rule, not pretending that such a rule already exists.

Now consider the numbers.

According to research by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat, published in his 2014 book Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty, the United States carried out 8,776 executions between 1890 and 2010. Of those, 276 were botched.

That's 3.15%.

But the figures become even more disturbing when we examine lethal injections. Of 1,054 executions using that method, 75 were botched.

That's approximately 7.2%.

Think about what that means. Lethal injection, advertised as a cleaner and more humane way to kill, had the highest recorded failure rate among the major execution methods examined in that research.

A medical-looking procedure. A prison gurney. A needle. A carefully written protocol.

And sometimes, a bloody mess disguised as modern justice.

The claim that lethal injections have been botched 11 times in the past 5 years deserves separate verification. But the broader historical record is damning enough without dressing up uncertain statistics.

And then there is Tony Carruthers.

In May 2026, Tennessee attempted to execute Carruthers by lethal injection. The execution team reportedly spent approximately 1.5 hours trying to establish the required intravenous access. They failed to complete the procedure.

The execution was abandoned.

Carruthers survived.

Governor Bill Lee granted him a 1-year reprieve.

A reprieve.

Not freedom from another execution attempt. Not a permanent commutation. Just another year with the possibility of death hanging over his head.

I can almost hear the bureaucratic explanation.

“Sorry, Mr. Carruthers. We couldn't kill you today. Please remain available while we sort out the technical difficulties.”

What a country.

And what makes Tennessee's handling of Christa Pike even more troubling is that her attorneys reportedly warned officials about her unusually small veins nearly 10 months before the execution.

They warned that establishing intravenous access could be difficult. The state proceeded anyway. After the failed execution, Pike's attorneys suggested that improperly placed intravenous lines or damaged veins might have prevented the drugs from entering her bloodstream as intended. That explanation remains an allegation, not an established finding. Tennessee ordered an investigation into the failure.

But here's what I want to know.

If government officials receive warnings that an execution procedure could fail, proceed anyway, and the prisoner suffers through a failed execution, why should the prisoner bear the consequences of that failure? Where does government responsibility begin? And where does government arrogance end?

Governor Bill Lee described Pike's failed execution as a disturbing tragedy while reaffirming his commitment to carrying out Tennessee's death sentences.

I understand his position. A jury imposed the sentence. The governor believes he has a duty to enforce it.

But duty without judgment can become cruelty.

A governor isn't a robot. He isn't a vending machine that dispenses death whenever somebody inserts a court order.

He has constitutional responsibilities. He has clemency powers. And he has a moral obligation to recognize when the machinery of justice has become a machinery of suffering.

By October 10, Pike had reportedly been discharged from the hospital and transferred to a prison rehabilitation facility, where she continued receiving medical care. Tennessee had suspended further executions for 2026 while officials investigated the failure.

Now imagine what another execution attempt would mean.

Another death warrant.

Another trip to the execution chamber.

Another set of needles.

Another struggle to find a vein.

Another room filled with witnesses waiting for a human being to stop breathing.

And another opportunity for the government to announce that something went wrong.

At what point does this become torture? At what point does a punishment authorized by law become an exercise in state-sponsored cruelty?

I know what defenders of capital punishment will say.

“She was sentenced to death, not to one attempt at death.”

Fine. That's the legal argument. But legality and morality aren't identical twins. History is littered with government actions that were once legal and later recognized as cruel, unjust, or indefensible. And even if the Supreme Court permits another attempt, that doesn't mean Tennessee must make one.

The governor can choose mercy without declaring Pike innocent. He can commute her sentence to life imprisonment without minimizing Colleen Slemmer's murder.

That distinction matters.

Because I refuse to accept the argument that opposing a second execution somehow means supporting the original crime.

Nonsense.

I can condemn Pike's murder of Colleen Slemmer and still condemn a government that might put Pike through another failed execution.

Both positions can be true.

Justice isn't a contest to determine who can be more brutal.

And if America wants to keep the death penalty, it should at least recognize a boundary that executioners cannot cross.

My proposed rule is simple: If the government administers lethal drugs in an execution attempt and the prisoner survives, the death sentence must be commuted to life imprisonment.

No second injection.

No second execution chamber.

No appeals to the governor for another opportunity to finish the job.

The prisoner remains accountable for the crime. The victim's family retains its right to justice. But the government loses its authority to attempt that execution again.

That's not a reward for murder. It's a consequence for government failure. And consequences, as prosecutors love to remind defendants, are supposed to matter.

I would go further. Any failed execution should trigger an independent investigation, public disclosure of what went wrong, and serious scrutiny of the officials responsible. If the state can demand accountability from ordinary citizens, ordinary citizens can demand accountability from the state. Especially when the state is exercising its most terrifying power: the authority to take a human life.

Christa Pike's case has exposed an uncomfortable truth about capital punishment in America. The government wants the public to believe that lethal injection is controlled, clinical, and reliable. But a needle doesn't magically transform killing into a medical procedure. A white sheet doesn't erase suffering. And a written protocol doesn't guarantee that the people carrying it out know what they're doing.

We can debate whether murderers deserve to die.

We can debate whether capital punishment deters crime.

We can debate whether the death penalty should exist at all.

But I believe there should be no debate about giving executioners unlimited chances to kill the same prisoner. Because once the government has tried to execute someone, administered the lethal drugs, and failed, something irreversible has already happened. The prisoner has endured the state's attempt to take their life. And the state has demonstrated that its supposedly precise procedure can go horribly wrong.

Christa Pike survived.

Colleen Slemmer did not.

That tragedy will never change.

But killing Pike after a second attempt won't bring Slemmer back. And allowing the government to repeat a failed execution won't erase the suffering of the first.

So I return to the question Tennessee cannot escape.

How many chances should the government get to kill one person?

My answer is one.

The state had its shot. Literally.

It fucked it up.

And if the government can't accept the consequences of its own failure, perhaps it has no business preaching accountability to anybody else.

Because justice isn't a video game.

And when the executioner loses, the answer shouldn't be: Insert another needle to continue.

 

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