Christa Pike Survives Execution: Her Case and 9 Other Women Who Faced the Death Penalty in the U.S.

Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, is conscious and speaking at a Nashville hospital one week after surviving a failed execution attempt with two doses of a lethal drug, according to her lawyers. Her case, described as «unprecedented,» has put the spotlight back on women sentenced to death in the United States.

• There are 45 women on death row in the country, representing only about 2.3% of all people under death sentences (DPIC, July 2026).
• Only 18 women have been executed since 1976, accounting for around 1% of the total.

What Happened During the Failed Execution of Christa Pike

Pike, 50, was sentenced for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her fellow student at a job training center in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time. She was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

On Wednesday, September 30, after the Supreme Court lifted a stay, the state administered two doses of pentobarbital, but Pike did not die. She was taken to a hospital with swollen, burned, and blistered arms, according to her lawyers. Experts cited by Al Jazeera believe the intravenous line may have been improperly placed.

Governor Bill Lee called what happened «deeply troubling,» ordered an independent review, and suspended another execution scheduled for this year. Pike’s lawyers are asking for her sentence to be commuted to life without parole and for all evidence from the procedure to be preserved.

9 Other Women Who Faced the Death Penalty

• Velma Barfield (North Carolina, November 2, 1984): the first woman executed after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. She was sentenced for poisoning her fiancé with arsenic.
• Karla Faye Tucker (Texas, February 3, 1998): sentenced for a 1983 double murder with a pickaxe in Houston. Her case drew international attention because of her religious conversion in prison.
• Judy Buenoano (Florida, March 30, 1998): executed in the electric chair for poisoning her husband.
• Aileen Wuornos (Florida, October 9, 2002): sentenced for killing men along Florida highways. Her story inspired the movie Monster.
• Frances Newton (Texas, September 14, 2005): sentenced for killing her husband and their two children.
• Teresa Lewis (Virginia, September 23, 2010): sentenced for the murders of her husband and stepson.
• Kelly Gissendaner (Georgia, September 30, 2015): sentenced for planning her husband’s murder with her lover.
• Lisa Montgomery (federal government, January 13, 2021): the first woman executed by the federal government since 1953. She killed a pregnant woman in Missouri and removed her baby.
• Amber McLaughlin (Missouri, January 3, 2023): the first transgender woman executed in the U.S. and the most recent execution of a woman in the country.

What’s Next

Christa Pike’s medical prognosis remains uncertain, according to her lawyers, and she remains handcuffed to her hospital bed under guard. Tennessee’s protocol provides for a second dose if a person does not die after the first, but it does not specify what should happen if someone survives the second dose. Her lawyers are going to court this Wednesday to seek more information about the failed procedure.

Sources: NPR/AP; Al Jazeera; WSMV; Death Penalty Information Center. Data consulted on October 7, 2026.