Tennessee's IV team spent 49 minutes searching for a vein in Christa Pike's arms on 30 September, cycling through up to 10 needles, and at multiple points openly discussing whether the vein they were targeting had "blown" — meaning burst, which would divert the lethal drug into tissue rather than the bloodstream. They injected her anyway. Pike survived a full dose of pentobarbital, becoming the only prisoner in modern times to do so. The new chronology, released by Pike's attorney Randy Spivey as part of separate litigation, reads like a procedural horror story. At 6:53pm, 18 minutes into the attempt, a team member first raised the possibility the vein was blown. At 6:57pm, a second warning. Two members poked the insertion site and both said they "can't tell." Two minutes later, they declared they had a line — only to discover it wasn't working. The needle came out severely bent. At 7:08pm, the team leader said "let's regroup." They switched arms, poked around some more, and at 7:13pm told Pike they "have it." The pentobarbital began flowing at 7:24pm. At 7:34pm, Pike cried out: "I feel like my arm is about to bust. It burns." She then made snoring and choking sounds. She did not die. After the execution was called off, she spent 10 days in hospital before being returned to prison. She can now talk and walk; her long-term prognosis is unknown. Pike's case is not isolated. Tennessee attempted to execute Tony Carruthers on 21 May using the same protocol. That team also failed to find a vein after more than 30 minutes. Carruthers also survived. His lawyers had filed a complaint in March 2025 explicitly warning that the execution team was "incompetent, insufficiently trained, insufficiently dedicated to doing their jobs, and/or insufficiently attentive" — and that the protocol ran an unacceptable risk of violating Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The litigation now argues that both botched executions were not anomalies but predicted outcomes of a system built on secrecy and institutional refusal to reform. Kit Thomas, an attorney for the death row plaintiffs, said the Tennessee Department of Correction and the Attorney General's Office "doubled down on secrecy and refused to make changes" after the problems were identified. The result: "extreme pain and suffering for our clients, in botched execution attempts that also inflicted lasting harm on victims' families, corrections staff, and media witnesses." Republican Governor Bill Lee has called off all executions in the state pending a review — a significant concession from a law-and-order administration. The political signal is clear: even supporters of capital punishment cannot defend a system that tortures prisoners, traumatizes witnesses, and fails at its stated purpose. The question now is whether the review leads to meaningful protocol reform or whether the state simply waits for attention to fade. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 at the time and spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement before the state attempted — and failed — to kill her. The failed execution has prompted nationwide scrutiny of lethal injection protocols and the institutional competence of the agencies that carry them out.
