Christa Pike’s Botched Execution Is a Travesty. Blame the Supreme Court’s MAGA Majority.

Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back—and keeps you posted on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. The state of Tennessee tried to put Christa Pike to death on Wednesday, in what was an embarrassing spectacle of cruelty. It was cruel because executing her decades after the crime that brought her to death row served no legitimate purpose, and because the person whom Tennessee killed was not the same person whom it sentenced to death in 1996. And just as Pike feared, her execution was horribly botched. It was stopped after two doses of the pentobarbital failed to kill her. She is the first person ever to survive after being given lethal injection drugs. Like her failed execution, her journey to death row was anything but smooth. Like many who find themselves there, from an early age, her life was punctuated by violence, abuse, and neglect. On September 9, the United Nations Human Rights Commission issued a statement explaining that Pike’s execution “would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row.” That trajectory nearly reached an end point on Wednesday. The past few days of Pike’s life were marked by a seesaw of court decisions as her lawyers tried every angle to save her life. On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear her claim that “the mental suffering and psychological terror she will experience under Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol is cognizable under the Eighth Amendment.” Then the next day, when it looked like all legal avenues to save her life had been exhausted, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted a stay of execution so it could consider whether Pike’s desire to contest an earlier denial of habeas corpus was barred by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which bars second or successive habeas petitions. Her case was strong. During her initial habeas claim, Pike’s attorneys claimed ineffective assistance of counsel at her trial, because her attorneys hadn’t brought up the sexual abuse Pike suffered as a child up as a potential mitigating factor during sentencing. Pike was 18-years-old when she murdered Colleen Slemmer and had suffered years of abuse prior to the killing, which might have been a factor at the sentencing phase. Opposing her habeas petition, Tennessee denied the sexual abuse claims and painted her as a “pathological liar.” Before trying to execute her, though, the state changed its tune on the sexual abuse claims and acknowledged them as true. State officials, however, refused to reconsider her case in light of that fact. A local NBC station reported that: During an August 2026 hearing on Pike’s challenge to Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, the state didn’t deny the abuse she suffered: ‘The State does not dispute the terrible things that Ms. Pike suffered…. And so it’s certainly not the State’s intention to try to minimize the suffering that Ms. Pike has experienced.’ This was a stunning reversal of the state’s longstanding contention that Pike fabricated her sexual abuse. While state officials and the Supreme Court refused to acknowledge these new facts, the Sixth Circuit took note of Pike’s contention that “the State’s concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape ‘erodes the foundation’” of her state court proceedings.” It concluded that “The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits.” So, for a few hours, Pike could breathe a sigh of relief, as the Sixth Circuit granted the stay to consider the novel details of her case. But such a last-minute stay of execution brings its own challenges for those to whom they are granted. As the Death Penalty Information Center observes, “After preparing to face his own death, a prisoner may experience not only immense relief, but serious psychological distress when the execution does not proceed. This distress may be greater the closer the prisoner came to death.’ In Pike’s case, the Sixth Circuit issued its stay less than two hours before she was scheduled to die. But the ink was hardly dry on that decision before the state of Tennessee filed an emergency appeal in the Supreme Court. The state accused Pike of filing “a second and successive habeas petition in disguise that presses a claim she already unsuccessfully presented.” It said she was engaged in “gamesmanship… familiar in capital litigation … designed to frustrate … ‘the State’s strong interest in finality and the surviving victims’ right to closure.” Tennessee told the court that “Colleen’s mother recently said, ‘Thirty-one years is long enough.’” At 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday night, the Supreme Court lifted the stay and gave the green light for Pike’s execution to proceed. Even as it was shocking, it should not have been a surprise, given the MAGA majority’s notorious impatience and desire to ease the path to the execution chamber. Such rulings from this court have become so common that the progressive justices don’t always dissent when they happen. This decision, though, was so upsetting that it drew a sharp dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Tennessee’s desire to expedite Pike’s execution by a few days or even weeks,” she wrote, “cannot outweigh her ‘fundamental interest in (her) own life.’ …. Stunningly, the Court acquiesces.” It didn’t take long for the state to move forward with Pike’s execution. No doubt Pike committed a horrible crime when she murdered and tortured 19-year-old Slemmer at a Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee. Along the way, Pike was reviled for the crime she committed. And nothing about her life before or after the crime moved people to think she should be treated mercifully. That included Gov. Bill Lee, who in the days before Pike’s execution rejected her clemency bid. It didn’t matter to him that, according to the clemency petition, she had accepted “responsibility, express(ed).. sincere, deep remorse, and continue(d)… to work toward becoming someone who can help others.” It didn’t matter that “While incarcerated, Christa worked to heal the impact of childhood abuse and neglect.” Tennessee failed Pike by refusing to see those things and those parts of her. It failed us all by assuming that what she deserved was fixed by what she did as an 18-year-old. That, of course, is the conceit of state killing. It depends on an arrogant belief that we can see into the future and know that someone who commits a capital crime should lose, as Supreme Court Justice William Brennan put it, “the right to have rights.” All Gov. Lee said by way of explanation for his clemency denial was “After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene.” That was it. Lee offered no explanation of why he was upholding her sentence. Of course, he didn’t have to, since as Tennessee’s Chief Executive, he has the prerogative to grant or withhold clemency as he sees fit. But one sentence? Didn’t Christa Pike deserve better? Similarly, the Supreme Court majority offered zero sentences explaining its decision to overturn the Sixth Circuit’s stay. Like many on death row, Pike had changed over her many years on death row. Her story, to borrow from the DPI, “stand(s) in stark contrast to the common narrative that people sentenced to death are beyond redemption.” Gov. Lee was unmoved. The Supreme Court was unmoved. But we should not allow ourselves to follow his example. Then the farcical tragedy of this botched execution happened. Gov. Lee has now paused all executions while the state tries to figure out what went wrong. But given his history, it wouldn’t be surprising if Tennessee’s machine of death is back up and running in no time. Perhaps most shameful of all, the Supreme Court ultimately cared more about speed than ensuring that justice was done in Pike’s case. They got speed. Pike did not get justice. She deserved better.