October 4, 2026 - SCOTUS To Hear Climate Case

In 1995, Christa Pike was 18. She took a classmate named Colleen Slemmer into the woods in Knoxville and killed her over the better part of an hour with a meat cleaver and a box cutter. She carved a pentagram into the body and kept a piece of Slemmer's skull. A jury sentenced her to death, and she spent the next 31 years as the only woman on Tennessee's death row.

On Wednesday night, Tennessee tried to carry out that sentence. It took at least seven needles to find a vein. Pike received two doses of pentobarbital. An hour later, witnesses could still hear her snoring. Then the curtain closed, the witnesses were sent home, and Pike went to a hospital.

She is there now, unconscious on a ventilator, while hospital staff try to clear the execution drug from her system. The state that spent an evening trying to end her life is now paying to keep her alive.

There is a legal reason for that. The Supreme Court has held that deliberate indifference to a prisoner's serious medical needs violates the Eighth Amendment. Once the execution was called off, Pike became a patient in state custody. But no court has squarely decided whether that duty applies when the state itself caused the emergency while carrying out a lawful death sentence.

Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions for the rest of the year, and the state's corrections commissioner has resigned. If Pike recovers, Tennessee will face the question of whether to try again. 

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