Tennessee failed twice to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection on Wednesday, leaving the 50-year-old alive and hospitalized. Governor Bill Lee halted the state`s remaining 2026 execution and ordered a third-party review.

Tennessee officials attempted twice on Wednesday night to execute Christa Pike, the only woman on the state's death row, and failed both times. Pike, 50, remained alive and was heard snoring after receiving two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital, according to her lawyers and media witnesses. She was taken from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville by ambulance for medical care.

The failure prompted Governor Bill Lee to call off the state's remaining scheduled execution for the year and order what he described as a "comprehensive, third-party review" of what happened.

What happened inside the chamber

Pike had been scheduled to die at 10 a.m. local time for a murder committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

The execution was delayed repeatedly through the day. The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a stay about an hour before the lethal injection was set to begin, citing the need to consider whether evidence of childhood sexual abuse was fully weighed at Pike's sentencing. The Tennessee attorney general's office appealed, arguing the last-minute halt traumatized the victim's family and rewarded delaying tactics. The U.S. Supreme Court later vacated the stay, clearing the way to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain its order; the three liberal justices dissented.

Media witnesses watching from a separate room said the curtain to the execution chamber was raised at 7:27 p.m., revealing Pike strapped to a gurney. She stayed awake and at one point lifted her head to ask prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did.

By 8:26 p.m., witnesses reported a second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. Pike was still audibly snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone in the chamber was cut at 8:53 p.m., when media witnesses were escorted out. A Department of Correction spokesperson told the witnesses she could not immediately say what had occurred.

Pike's attorneys filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday, saying she was in "unnecessary agony" and that continuing the process would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They argued the state should begin lifesaving measures, writing that "failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs."

In a statement, the legal team said: "We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."

An 'unprecedented' failure

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called what Pike experienced "singular and unparalleled." Seven other people have survived medical problems after execution teams failed to access a vein for lethal injection drugs, she said, but no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs themselves.

It was the second time this year Tennessee was unable to carry out an execution. In May, the state called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners spent more than an hour failing to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in the Supreme Court dissent, said vacating the stay interfered with the Sixth Circuit's handling of the case and "unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike's claim."

The 1995 murder

Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in January 1995. Both were students at a Job Corps training center in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time; she was sentenced to death in 1996.

The case drew national attention in part because of a pentagram carved into Slemmer's body and other details that fed fears of Satan worship during the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.

Pike remains in state custody pending medical care, and her legal status is unresolved. Tennessee has now paused executions while the review proceeds.