(The Center Square) – Nearly a week after the state tried to execute her for a 1995 murder, Christa Pike’s attorneys said she is awake and talking.
Pike received two doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30 during the state’s attempt to execute her, but she did not die.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Pike is continuing to receive medical care, her attorneys said in a statement to The Center Square.
“Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery,” Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender, and Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee said.
According to testimony and prosecutors, Pike was 18 in 1995 when she killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors say Pike and two accomplices tortured, slashed and fatally beat her. All were part of a Job Corps training program in Knoxville.
A pentagram was carved into Slemmer’s chest. Investigators say Pike bragged of keeping a skull fragment as a “souvenir.”
She was also convicted of attempted murder in 2001 after trying to strangle another prisoner with a shoestring.
When asked how much Pike’s care is costing the state or her condition, the Department of Corrections said it didn’t have any further information to share.
Kit Thomas, deputy chief of the Capital Habeas Unit at the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville, told The Center Square in an interview that she wasn’t surprised by the department’s answer. Thomas, who is not part of Pike’s defense team, filed a lawsuit on behalf of nine clients in Davidson County Chancery Court challenging the single-drug protocol established in 2025.
“There’s been absolutely no transparency, no public accountability, no ability for the public to scrutinize what the department is doing,” Thomas said. “During the course of our litigation, we’ve had the opportunity to take a number of depositions of Tennessee Department of Corrections Officials. During the course of those depositions, of five TDOC officials, the state asserted privileges and instructed witnesses not to answer over 100 questions.”
Thomas is also critical of Frank Strada, the Department of Corrections Commissioner, who resigned on Saturday.
“We knew about his history in Arizona, where he was the deputy director of their Department of Corrections,” Thomas said. “During his time in Arizona, three individuals were executed, and each of those was marked by prolonged, difficult attempts to establish IV access. We had an opportunity to depose Frank Strada during the course of our litigation here in Tennessee and during that deposition, he admitted to bringing with him to Tennessee his Arizona protocols.”
Strada, who made $21,160 a month, or $253,920 annually, according to the Transparent Tennessee website, resigned on Saturday. His tenure began in January 2023. Strada led the department when the decision was made to use the single drug pentobarbital. Lee paused executions in 2022 to review the state’s death penalty protocols and tasked Strada with investigating the methods.
“I am confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws,” Strada said in a statement on Dec. 27, 2024, announcing the adoption of pentobarbital as the single execution drug.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton said state lawmakers will consider changing the execution method when they reconvene in January.
“We will look at all options – expanding the alternatives, and changing the current medications to include potassium chloride,” Sexton said on social media.
