October 1, 2026 - Condemned murderer survives execution in Tennessee in dramatic, fresh blow to death penalty

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1:03a convicted murderer in the United States, state of Tennessee, has survived and attempted legally permissible execution by lethal injection. The failed execution is being described as a major failure of the state's death penalty system. Now, 50-year-old Christophe Pike was due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to go ahead. But according to Halloyer's Pike survived two doses of lethal injection and was later rushed to hospital. Now, the Tennessee Correctional Officials insisting they followed the state's execution protocol and have now launched a review into what went wrong. Witnesses at the prison say Pike appeared awake at the procedure when it began and could later be heard snoring inside the chamber.

2:09Now, the Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent investigation and announced that all remaining executions that are scheduled for this year are suspended. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 18-year-old Colleen Slemer. Alright, let's get some detail now and we speak to NewsRumafika's Washington correspondent Simon Marx, who talks to us from London tonight. Good evening to you and thank you very much for joining. Let's start with what Miss Pike was convicted for, for South Africans who may not be familiar with this case. Let's paint that background first. Yes, Molly, and it's important, I think, really to focus on the nature of the crime before getting to what happened in Tennessee last night.

3:11At the time of the murder back in 1995, Christopher Pike was 18 years old and she and her boyfriend are 17-year-old. Dragged Colleen Slemer in tight Colleen Slemer into some woods near the University of Tennessee and beat her to death brutally and savagely over what the court at the time heard was Christopher Pike's jealousy of Miss Slemer and her belief that Miss Slemer might be seeking to date her boyfriend. Miss Pike left the murder scene with a piece of Miss Slemer's skull and showed it to at least one friend in the aftermath of that killing. But because she was 18 at the time of the crime, she was charged as an adult and the prosecutors brought a death penalty case against her.

4:12She was sentenced to death, extraordinary scenes in the courtroom back in 1996 as the 18-year-old Christopher Pike still with spots on her face burst into tears and begged the judge for one last opportunity to hug her mother before she was taken away. The court did not weigh any evidence whatsoever about the fact that she had been on the receiving end of sexual abuse in her childhood and also had been raped during her childhood before she was sentenced to death. Her boyfriend, 17 at the time, was not eligible to face the death penalty. And so he is now serving a life prison sentence he applied for parole just a few months ago and was turned down for parole but he still has the possibility theoretically of one day getting out of jail. So this was always a controversial case. There's no question about the brutality of the murder that took place and about the fact that the victim's mother who was present in the death chamber last night wants to see Christa Pike.

5:23A face execution for the murder of her daughter but there is also no question that Christa Pike's lawyers argue that there were circumstances that the jury never heard relating to Christa Pike's early years and also to the rape and sexual assault that she suffered as a child. So that's the background to this story Simon that you've painted for us. So let's then come back to Wednesday nights failed execution. What do the officials say in Tennessee as to what happened? Well, absolutely nothing. I mean, they claim they followed the protocol and that there's now going to be some kind of third party investigation into what took place. But most of the information about what took place in that death chamber is coming not from the state which has secrecy laws in place to prevent members of the public from scrutinizing where the state, for example, procures its pentabarbitol and the other drugs years.

6:32The other drugs used in executions. Most of the information has come from journalists who were there as witnesses and they, including journalists who have witnessed many previous executions in Tennessee say in the words of one of them, there was nothing normal about what took place last night. So they say that Christa Pike received two separate full syringes of pentabarbitol that the curtains in the execution chamber were drawn twice, denying witnesses an opportunity to see exactly what was going on inside the chamber. At one point when the curtains were open, she complained that there was a pain in her arm and she thought it was going to burst. She asked if it was always like this, should the arm always be throbbing like this, her advisors urged her to relax during the process. She said that she was trying to do that and then at one point she appears to have fallen asleep although after the curtains were opened for a second time, she could apparently be seen.

7:39Gazing around the room, so something went very, very wrong and just an extraordinarily ethical and moral contradictory set of circumstances played out where for a while medical technicians working for the state of Tennessee were in that jail trying to help kill Christa Pike. And then a matter of an hour later, doctors and nurses working for the state of Tennessee in a hospital were trying to save her life because she had been rushed there by ambulance. Massive questions about what went wrong and this is not the first botched execution in the state of Tennessee or in any of the other 27 states where the death penalty is still legally permissible. Huge failure perhaps is an understatement Simon let's talk about her condition as you say after that failed execution she is rushed to hospital.

8:41Do you know what her condition is now. We don't know anything about her condition the state has not issued any kind of information about whether she's conscious what sort of treatment she might be receiving nor indeed is there any indication of whether they might try and execute her again. Certainly we know that there's a moratorium now on executions in Tennessee for the rest of this year. There was at least one other death row inmate I think scheduled for execution in early December there while that inquiry launched by Governor Bill Lee gets underway but her lawyers are saying that the emergency procedures that were supposed to exist last night in case anything went wrong did not work. They dialed the emergency number at the nearest courthouse where supposedly judges were on standby waiting to make any decisions in the event that there was a problem with the execution nobody picked up the phone to the point where one of Christopher Pike's lawyers had to get into a car and and race to the courthouse with legal documents seeking to compel the state to call off the execution.

9:58And convey Miss Pike to a hospital so across the board something went wrong and there are huge questions to be answered about the Penta Barbitol. We know that many American states are now taking to the back streets to the black market to acquire drugs used in executions because in some states the manufacturer of those drugs is now banned. And there are many manufacturers that are refusing to sell drugs to states or the federal government for use in executions. So states have had to go to the black market to try and secure the cocktail of chemicals that they need to kill people and therefore we know nothing about whether any of the drugs that were used last night were approved were made to any kind of professionals spec. Massive questions about that not only for Tennessee but for other states all over the country and as you were saying golly a real warning here you know when South Africans debate the restoration of capital punishment.

11:06I mean the fact of the matter is that the United States in those states that still have the death penalty is struggling again and again and again to come up with some kind of protocol that works that is legally acceptable and the way that they are going to do. So that is a very acceptable and that is considered by society to some extent to be humane and what was witnessed in Tennessee last night was clearly the complete antithesis of humane. Well you've touched on exactly my final question to you Simon because it's to do with the moral questions around the death penalty as you correctly say. So we know that some other countries may possibly be considering also bringing back the death penalty.

12:09What lessons does this case offer such countries especially when execution methods can fail. Well look I mean there's the same debate taking place here in the UK there is a vocal minority here in the UK that would like to see the restoration of capital punishment in Britain and certainly South Africa with the very very specific issues that you're dealing with there. Finds itself in a similar position I can only tell you that from an American perspective the public has soured in terms of support for the death penalty back in 1995 only 13% of the country opposed the use of the death penalty. Now that number is up to around 45 46% in voter surveys 23 states have already outlawed it and there are four of the other 27 states that have placed a moratorium on the use of capital punishment.

13:15But the biggest issue for the United States both at a federal level because remember that there are state death rows in those 27 states but there's also a federal government death row and during his first term in office Donald Trump presided over a record number of 13 executions of inmates on that federal death row before Joe Biden came in and commuted the sentences of 37 of the remaining 40 inmates to life in prison. But in the United States to life imprisonment without parole the United States is struggling with finding ways of executing people that meet the standards legally that are set to try and find humane ways. There are other than lethal injection there's the gas chamber in use in some states you can opt in some states to be shot by firing squad but in every case and in every state there have been legal challenges to those methods and questions about the manner in which executions are carried out.

14:22But put more basically the United States is finding it harder and harder to kill convicted death row inmates and the harder it becomes and the more there are events like the one that took place last night in Tennessee the more public opposition to the death penalty grows. Here's a Africa's international correspondent Simon Marx thank you very much indeed for that update what a strange story.