What happens now after failed execution attempt in Tennessee of female inmate Christa Pike.

Witnesses to Christa Gail Pike’s failed Tennessee execution say at around 7:41 p.m. CST, a Department of Correction staff-member placed a rock inside the chamber Pike was being put to death inside. It’s a notorious part of the state’s execution protocol, and one that has raised questions.

“TDOC also doesn’t tell you what that rock signifies, but it’s notoriously considered TDOC signaling that was the last of the Pentobarbital in this injection,” WVLT’s Will Puckett reported. He was inside the witness room during the attempted execution.

Generally, the rock is believed to signify the beginning of a mandatory waiting period between an offender’s final injection and when a medical professional reads their vitals.

However, in Pike’s case, the rock instead signified the waiting period between her last injection and when she would be taken to a nearby hospital to be treated after her botched execution.

Pike is the latest inmate the State of Tennessee has failed to put to death, and as of Thursday afternoon, there’s still no word on whether she is still alive or dead. Witnesses to the event said she was alive and breathing when TDOC ushered them outside the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, something Pike’s legal team also confirmed.

Even before her failed injections — Pike received a pair — her execution was shrouded in chaos. Just under an hour from her scheduled execution time at 11 a.m. EST Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals pressed pause, granting a stay. That stay prompted a series of filings to the U.S. Supreme Court from the state and Pike’s legal team and an ultimate decision from the highest court in the country that allowed Tennessee to carry out the execution.

The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office. The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility.

Tennessee Department of Correction
Thursday afternoon, there’s still no word on what the state’s next steps will be in attempting to execute Pike, who was the primary offender in a grisly 1995 Knoxville murder.

Pike was convicted in 1996 in the “Jobs Corps Murder,” a name that came about because both Pike and the victim — 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer — were members of the Jobs Corps at the time of the girl’s 1995 killing. Prosecutors and testimony have said Pike conspired with two others, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, to kill Slemmer over relationship issues. It was discovered throughout the case that the offenders had carved a pentacle into Slemmer’s chest and taken a piece of her skull as a souvenir of the killing.