This case is starting to become a roller coaster.
Christa Pike was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over two centuries for a particularly gruesome and torturous murder of a young woman named Colleen Slemmer, along with two accomplices. Unsurprisingly, there were people advocating for mercy for her and there was a last-minute appeal that resulted in a temporary stay, as reported by our own ‘Just Mindy.’
Since then, the Supreme Court reversed that stay…
BREAKING: The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Tennessee to execute Christa Pike, vacating a stay of execution issued by the Sixth Circuit earlier today. Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Kagan and Jackson. pic.twitter.com/GhAy0I2syS
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) September 30, 2026
Read the order and dissent here: https://t.co/5QXGZLSYQn
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) September 30, 2026
Of course, it's almost always the same three dissenting:
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) October 1, 2026
In any case, Tennessee worked to carry out the execution and something went wrong:
BREAKING: Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is still alive after 2 lethal injections, according to her lawyer.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 1, 2026
At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said executioners had "injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring," her lawyers… pic.twitter.com/X09LALjb7C
The cut off text:
At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said executioners had ‘injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring,’ her lawyers said.
Authorities appeared to give Pike two doses of pentobarbital, but she was still alive more than 40 minutes after the last dose. Officials then escorted media witnesses out of the area, and the Tennessee Department of Corrections said it was unable to immediately provide information about what happened.
The attempted execution comes after the Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay that had temporarily spared Pike from becoming the first woman executed in Tennessee since the early 1800s.
Read what unfolded inside and the legal battle that preceded the execution attempt: [link omitted]
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Indeed, we have video of the moment when one of her lawyers was making a statement about the attempted execution and, suddenly, he realized that there was an ambulance there, probably for his still-living client:
The Christa Pike execution witnesses press conference was just interrupted by ambulances arriving. It was botched. She seems to still be alive after two lethal doses.
— Cassandra MacDonald (@CassandraRules) October 1, 2026
The execution team was supposed to be all women, not sure if that ended up being the case. pic.twitter.com/0FJK6s1iD4
We could be wrong, but we wonder if he knew she was alive when he was making the statement. Did he just assume she was dead? We think a few of his expressions were meme-worthy. Not that he was behaving abnormally or unprofessionally, but we could still imagine moments from that becoming a meme.
And of course, this is leading to another application for a stay of execution:
Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death for a 1995 murder Wednesday, media witnesses said. Her lawyers filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the US Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in "unnecessary…
— CNN (@CNN) October 1, 2026
The cut off text is simply the word 'agony.' As in 'she was in unnecessary agony.'
Meanwhile, the article talks more about the emergency attempt to get a stay of execution:
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the US 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 district court.
The motion also asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures. ‘Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs.’
This calls into question whether or not she is presently receiving medical care. We have seen other accounts say that she was receiving medical care, and, well … what are the ambulances there for if not to give her care and/or to take her to the hospital? But we don’t have direct confirmation one way or the other.
In any case, the argument is that even if the execution wasn’t inherently cruel and unusual punishment before, it is now that it has been botched, or so her lawyers are almost certainly arguing as we speak. Honestly, if this author was in charge of the courts, we would say they should give Pike anesthetic sufficient to knock her out and then use a pistol to finish the job. We believe that the Eighth Amendment means that we shouldn’t be needlessly cruel during execution, but we don’t see how this is insufficient. This author isn't a doctor, but he has been a patient more than once during some pretty serious surgery. We have trouble believing they can’t ensure that she feels no pain with a sufficiently heavy dose of anesthetic. But we are always open to being proven wrong.
Finally, Mike Davis puts the execution into crucial context:
In 1995, Christa Gail Pike, her boyfriend, and another monster lured into the woods 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer, tortured her for 30 minutes, carved a pentagram into her chest, murdered her, and stole a piece of her skull as a souvenir.
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) October 1, 2026
In 1996, Pike got… https://t.co/W2VDrAVL2c
The cut off text:
In 1996, Pike got convicted and sentenced to death.
While in prison, in 2001, Pike got convicted again for attempted first-degree murder of another prisoner, who she attempted to strangle with a shoestring.
(A swift execution after her 1996 death sentence would have prevented this.)
Pike exhausted her appeals.
On the eve of her execution, Democrat U.S. Circuit Judges Karen Moore (Clinton) and Jane Stranch (Obama) attempted to play b-list heroines and halt the execution—naturally, for bogus reasons.
Over the pathetic, partisan whining of 3 more Democrat women, this time on the Supreme Court, the 6 Republican-appointed justices ruled the execution can go forward.
These 5 Democrat women judges should resign and run for elective office, if they don’t like the death penalty.
In the meantime, let’s have these gals try to rule with logic instead of emotion next time.
That bit about being convicted of attempted murder was new information to this author but was verified by checking the Tennessee Department of Correction website, which states that:
On August 24, 2001, while incarcerated, Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder in the assault on inmate Patricia Jones.
When a person tells this author that they believe life in prison without parole is sufficient punishment for murder, we often respond by asking: ‘and what do you do if that person murders again?’ Yes, the inmate survived, but it only underlines that prisoners can still harm other prisoners and guards. And of course, prisoners are also known to escape entirely, now and then. So the only way to protect everyone else from a killer's violence is execution.
As the saying goes, kindness to the cruel is cruelty to the kind. In this author's opinion, it is past time to be kind to the people who loved Colleen Slemmer.
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