ABOLISH THE DEATH PELNALTY

Tennessee’s dark history of botched executions

"Tennessee now is competing... for the title of the most incompetent executing state."

David Millward
Sat, October 3, 2026 
THE TELEGRAPH


Christa Pike was the fifth death row inmate in Tennessee since 2009 whose execution went awry

On Wednesday, the first woman in Tennessee in 200 years was set to be executed.

Christa Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the brutal murder of a classmate when she was 18. It took seven needles and two doses of the chemical sedative pentobarbital before the execution was eventually called off.

Pike was left barely alive, unconscious, breathing with a ventilator and severely brain damaged, her lawyers said.

According to campaigners, this was the fifth execution to have gone awry in the state since 2009.

Lethal injections were first adopted in the US by Oklahoma in 1977, but it was Texas which was the first to administer a fatal dose in 1982.

By 2009, every US state that retained the death penalty had adopted lethal injection as a method of execution.

Lethal injection was seen as a more humane alternative to traditional methods such as the electric chair and gas chamber. It was also cheaper.

The original cocktail of choice was sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. Drug shortages meant other chemicals were used.

Christa Pike left barely alive with severe brain damage after seven needles and two doses of sedative failed to kill her - Getty Images

According to one study by Austin Sarat, a professor of political science at Amherst College, more than 7 per cent of lethal injections carried out across the US were botched – often inflicting horrendous and prolonged agony on the prisoner.

This percentage was more than double the average for other modes of execution.

Prof Sarat said: "I've studied every execution in the United States since 1890. Lethal injection has been botched more frequently than any other method of execution."

Pike is not the only death row inmate to have survived. Tony Carruthers's execution was abandoned in May after staff could not find a suitable vein in which to inject the pentobarbital.

Carruthers was put to death for his part in the kidnapping and murder of two men. The execution was abandoned after more than an hour of trying to find a vein.

Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee, granted a reprieve after a court banned using the same method to execute Carruthers again.

Carruthers suffered a stroke and was left partially paralysed by the procedure.

Tony Carruthers' execution was halted in May after staff were unable to find a suitable vein to administer the pentobarbital - Tennessee Board of Correction

Maria DeLiberato, Carruthers's lawyer, said: "If the state of Tennessee is going to execute its own, there has to be full and complete transparency.

"The stories coming out of Tennessee today put me right back in that room with Tony, watching the state put him through a torturous execution attempt last May. Tennessee has been on notice for years about serious problems with its execution protocol.

"We called for an independent review after Tony's botch. Our calls were ignored, and now Christa has also paid the price for Tennessee's failures. Enough is enough."

Others did not survive, but death did not come quickly or painlessly.

Byron Black, who had a heart defibrillator, cried in agony, "It's hurting so bad," during his execution in August last year.

A court had been told the device, which kick-starts a heart when it fails, would prolong the execution.

The trial judge agreed and ordered the device to be switched off. But Tennessee's Supreme Court reversed the decision.

Byron Black, who had a heart defibrillator, cried in agony during his execution attempt

Then there was the case of Oscar Smith, whose execution was halted 30 minutes before it was due to take place on April 21, 2022, after it emerged that the drugs had not been tested according to the state's protocol.


He was finally executed on May 22 last year after Tennessee decided it would only use pentobarbital to put prisoners to death.

Oscar Smith's execution was halted in April 2022 after officials discovered the lethal drugs had not been tested according to state protocol - Tennessee Department of Correction

Stacy Rector, the executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, witnessed the execution of Steve Henley in 2009.

She said: "It was horrific; the whole point of lethal injection execution is to present a very sanitised, medical-looking procedure.

"When it goes wrong, the reality of what you're doing starts to make itself known.

"There had been concern about whether or not this cocktail that was being used at that time was going to anaesthetise Mr Henley properly.

"At that time they used a paralytic that would literally trap you. You couldn't move at all and so if the anaesthesia wasn't working you couldn't show any sign that you were awake because you were paralysed in your own body."

Steve Henley was executed via lethal injection and died in 2009

Death was neither instantaneous nor humane. It took 13 minutes, during which time he turned blue, and veins protruded from his head.

Even Republican legislators said they wanted executions put on hold in a letter to the governor.

"We raise these concerns," they wrote, "not in opposition to the death penalty but in defence of it – out of respect for the rule of law, the verdicts of Tennessee juries and the families still awaiting justice."

The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed "established execution protocol" in the case of Christa Pike. It declined to comment on the other cases raised by The Telegraph.

Prof Sarat was hardly surprised by the latest developments in Tennessee.

He said: "Botched executions have happened everywhere. They've happened in Oklahoma, they've happened in Texas, they've happened in Arizona, they've happened in Ohio.

"Tennessee now is competing... for the title of the most incompetent executing state."