Tennessee had instructions for what to do if the first round did not kill Christa Pike.

Give another.

But after the second round, Pike was still alive.

And according to the account provided, Tennessee’s execution protocol had no written next step.

That may be the single most consequential detail to emerge from the extraordinary September 30 attempt to execute Pike at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

Witnesses watched her take large breaths.

They saw her yawn.

They heard her make loud, rhythmic snoring sounds.

They watched the curtain close.

Then reopen.

Then close again.

And when the microphone was finally cut at approximately 8:53 p.m., reporters said they could still hear Pike breathing.

Her attorneys were already rushing to court.

An ambulance soon arrived.

Pike was transported to a Nashville hospital.

Governor Bill Lee halted Tennessee’s remaining execution for 2026 and ordered an independent review.

Now the state faces a question its written procedure may not have adequately answered before Pike was placed on the gurney.

What happens when the backup execution procedure fails too?

To understand how Tennessee reached that moment, the story has to begin with Colleen Slemmer.

On January 12, 1995, Pike was an 18-year-old student at a Job Corps training center in Knoxville.

Colleen was 19.

Prosecutors said Pike believed Colleen was attempting to interfere with her relationship with her boyfriend.

Colleen was taken to a wooded area near the University of Tennessee campus and killed in an extraordinarily brutal attack.

Three people were involved, according to the source.

Pike.

Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.

And Shadolla Peterson.

Peterson testified against Pike and received probation.

Shipp, who was 17, could not receive a death sentence and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Pike alone received death.

In 1996, at age 20, she became the youngest woman on death row in the modern era, according to the source.

For more than three decades, the legal case continued.

Pike did not deny killing Colleen.

Her attorneys instead focused much of their later litigation on what they argued jurors had not fully heard about Pike’s childhood abuse and mental illness.

Those claims became central to her final appeals.

But none of them changed the crime.

And none changed what Colleen’s mother, May Martinez, had spent more than 30 years waiting to see resolved.

That distinction matters because September 30 would eventually become dominated by the suffering and medical condition of Christa Pike.

But the case existed because Colleen Slemmer was killed.

Her family entered that day expecting the sentence to reach its conclusion.

Instead, they left with another unresolved chapter.

Before the execution attempt, Pike’s lawyers had raised another set of concerns.

Her veins.

They argued that Pike had compromised vascular access and that lethal injection could therefore expose her to severe pain.

After the failed attempt, her attorneys claimed many of the risks they had warned about had materialized.

Difficult IV access.

Possible blown veins.

Questions about the execution drugs.

Insufficient emergency medical planning.

And a protocol they criticized as excessively secretive.

Those are the defense’s claims.

They are not, by themselves, findings from the independent investigation.

But Tennessee already had reasons to scrutinize its lethal-injection system.

Years earlier, the state abruptly stopped an execution after acknowledging that required testing of its execution drugs had not been completed.

Executions were paused while the system was reviewed.

Tennessee subsequently moved to a single-drug pentobarbital protocol.

Then came another failure.

Tony Kurthers.

Only months before Pike’s scheduled execution, Kurthers was strapped down while execution personnel attempted for more than an hour to establish the required IV access.

They could not.

The execution was stopped.

Governor Lee granted him a one-year reprieve.

That failure was different from what would later happen to Pike.

Kurthers never reached the drug-administration stage.

Pike did.

And that distinction would become crucial.

In early September, Pike’s legal team petitioned Governor Lee for clemency.

They asked him to commute her death sentence to life without parole.

The campaign extended beyond Tennessee.

Advocacy organizations called for mercy.

United Nations experts opposed the execution and criticized Pike’s decades of isolation as Tennessee’s only female death-row prisoner.

Lee declined to intervene.

The Tennessee Supreme Court also refused to stop the execution.

The legal battle continued.

Pike was placed into the final pre-execution conditions required under Tennessee’s procedure.

During that period, she wrote to her spiritual adviser.

According to the source, Pike said she was not afraid to die.

She was nervous about the process.

That statement would take on an entirely different meaning hours later.

September 30 began with an execution scheduled for 10 a.m.

Witnesses arrived.

Tennessee prepared to proceed.

Then, at approximately 9 a.m., the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay.

The vote was 2-1.

According to the source, the court wanted additional time to consider whether Pike’s claims concerning childhood sexual abuse had been adequately addressed during sentencing.

For several hours, the execution appeared uncertain.

Tennessee’s attorney general sought intervention from the United States Supreme Court.

The state argued that another last-minute delay harmed Colleen’s family and represented abusive litigation tactics.

Then, at approximately 5:50 p.m., the Supreme Court cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed.

The decision was 6-3.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, according to the source.

An execution scheduled for morning had become a nighttime execution.

At approximately 6:40 p.m., selected media witnesses entered the viewing area adjacent to the death chamber.

Some had covered executions before.

They immediately noticed the delay.

Preparation appeared to be taking longer than expected.

Then, around 7:26 p.m., the curtain opened.

Christa Pike was strapped to the gurney.

An IV was visible.

The warden asked for her final statement.

According to witness accounts summarized in the source, Pike spoke about love.

She said she loved people who were angry with her as well as those who supported her.

She said she was at peace.

She was ready to go.

She interacted with her spiritual adviser.

They sang.

He touched her head.

The scene appeared to be approaching its expected conclusion.

Then, approximately eight minutes after the curtain opened, Pike said something about her arm.

It felt as though it was going to burst.

According to the source’s description of Associated Press reporting, she asked officials whether it was supposed to feel that way.

That question now sits at the center of the medical uncertainty surrounding the failed execution.

What exactly was happening in Pike’s arm?

The source cannot answer that.

Neither can the witnesses.

Pain around an IV site does not by itself prove infiltration, extravasation or any other specific complication.

But the timing makes it important evidence for investigators.

Around 7:37 p.m., one witness reported seeing Pike take four very large breaths.

Her body visibly rose.

Minutes passed.

At approximately 7:45, a witness saw her yawn.

Then, around 7:46, officials closed the curtain.

The witnesses lost visual access to the chamber.

One reporter said Pike was clearly still alive when it closed.

Approximately three minutes later, the curtain reopened.

Pike’s mouth was open.

Witnesses heard a loud, rhythmic sound they repeatedly described as snoring.

One thought it sounded almost like choking.

Another saw Pike grunt.

She lifted her head.

The sounds continued.

Experienced execution reporters in the witness room began realizing that what they were watching did not resemble the executions they had previously covered.

One reporter said she had witnessed executions throughout the previous year and most of the current year.

She had never seen anything like it.

The witnesses wanted the curtain reopened when they could not see what was happening.

They could still hear Pike.

At approximately 8:05, the curtain closed again.

It would not reopen for them.

What happened next is where the written execution protocol becomes central.

According to Pike’s lawyers’ court filings as summarized in the source, Tennessee proceeded through two rounds of pentobarbital.

The second had reportedly been administered by approximately 8:26 p.m.

But that statement requires precision.

It does not establish from this transcript alone exactly how much pentobarbital successfully entered Pike’s bloodstream.

It does not establish that both IV lines functioned correctly.

It does not establish whether any medication entered surrounding tissue.

Those questions require medical and execution records.

What the source does say is that Tennessee’s protocol contemplated another set of syringes if the prisoner remained alive after the first.

That was the backup.

Then Pike remained alive after the backup process.

And according to the source, the protocol did not specify another execution procedure beyond it.

No third drug sequence.

No additional execution step.

No clear Plan C.

Behind the closed curtain, witnesses heard doors opening and closing.

Pike’s attorneys moved in and out.

So did her spiritual adviser.

The reporters could hear activity.

They could not see what officials were doing.

Then came 8:53 p.m.

The warden told them to leave.

The microphone was shut off.

As they were escorted away, witnesses said they could still hear Pike making the loud breathing or snoring sound.

Associated Press reporter Kim Chandler described Pike as clearly very alive.

Another Nashville reporter later emphasized how much of the critical sequence had occurred behind a closed curtain while Pike remained alive.

Meanwhile, Pike’s attorneys were filing emergency motions.

They went to Tennessee and federal courts.

According to the source, the filings asserted that Pike remained alive, had a heartbeat and had not lost consciousness.

Her lawyers alleged that she was experiencing unnecessary agony.

They asked courts to order the state to remove the IV lines.

And they requested immediate life-saving medical treatment.

That moment represented an extraordinary reversal of purpose.

For most of September 30, Pike’s lawyers had been asking courts to prevent Tennessee from killing her.

Now Tennessee had begun the execution.

And the lawyers were asking courts to force the state to save her.

At approximately 9:15 p.m., ambulances arrived at Riverbend.

Around 9:28, they departed with police following.

Pike was taken to a Nashville hospital.

The execution was over.

Pike was alive.

At approximately 11 p.m., the Tennessee Department of Correction issued a statement.

Its position was significant.

The department said it had followed every step of its lawful protocol as approved by the Attorney General’s office.

It also said the protocol did not authorize additional procedures beyond those that had already been performed.

That statement may become one of the most important pieces of the independent review.

Because if Tennessee followed its protocol, the central question changes.

This would not simply be a case of personnel failing to follow instructions.

It could become a case about the instructions themselves.

Tennessee had a procedure for the initial execution-drug sequence.

It had another step if the first failed to result in death.

Then that additional procedure was exhausted.

Pike remained alive.

What exactly were officials expected to do next?

At what point were they required to abandon the execution?

Who made that decision?

Was the correction commissioner involved?

What medical information was available?

Were the IV sites inspected?

Was the possibility of infiltration considered?

Did personnel verify that the lines remained patent before proceeding with the second administration?

When did officials begin treating Pike as a medical emergency rather than as a prisoner whose execution was still underway?

Why was an ambulance summoned when it was?

And what happened during the long period when witnesses were unable to see into the chamber?

Those questions should not be answered through speculation.

The records should answer them.

Execution logs.

IV documentation.

Medication records.

Drug testing and storage information.

Medical observations.

Communications between correctional personnel.

The timing of emergency calls.

Court communications.

The independent review ordered by Governor Lee will have to reconstruct that timeline.

Lee’s response came quickly.

He said carrying out a lawful sentence is among the state’s most serious responsibilities.

Tennesseans, he said, expect that responsibility to be fulfilled legally, constitutionally and effectively.

He ordered a comprehensive third-party review.

And the remaining Tennessee execution scheduled for 2026 would not proceed.

Lee later said he was highly disappointed by what had happened.

When reporters asked why Pike’s case prompted a statewide pause while the earlier Kurthers failure had not, Lee pointed to the circumstances surrounding Pike.

The state needed to determine what happened.

Then it needed to make whatever changes were necessary.

When asked whether Pike’s death sentence would be commuted, however, Lee did not provide an answer in the account.

That means Pike’s legal future remains unresolved.

Her lawyers want commutation.

The state has not committed to it.

And no future execution date is established in this source.

But Pike’s case has created a situation death-penalty observers described as extraordinary.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, characterized the case as singular and unparalleled.

According to the source, she noted that other condemned prisoners had survived attempted executions because personnel could not obtain the necessary vascular access.

Pike’s case was different.

The drug-administration process had already begun.

Again, the precise amount successfully delivered into circulation remains a separate medical question.

That uncertainty is exactly why the investigation matters.

International criticism followed as well.

United Nations human-rights officials called on Tennessee not to attempt another execution.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk argued that the case demonstrated broader reasons for abolishing capital punishment.

Those are the positions of those officials and organizations.

They are not legal determinations about Tennessee’s future options.

The same distinction applies to the other side of the debate.

The fact that Pike survived does not erase Colleen Slemmer.

Colleen’s family had waited more than three decades.

Her mother had spent years thinking about what her daughter experienced during the murder.

September 30 was supposed to represent an ending.

Instead, the family left Tennessee with the case once again unresolved.

That is the difficult weight on both sides of what happened.

Christa Pike survived an execution attempt and was hospitalized in critical condition.

Colleen Slemmer remains the victim whose murder resulted in Pike’s death sentence.

Scrutinizing Tennessee’s treatment of Pike does not require minimizing Colleen.

Remembering Colleen does not eliminate Tennessee’s obligation to explain what happened during the execution.

The independent investigation should be capable of doing both.

The source says Pike remained in a Nashville hospital receiving life-saving medical care.

Her attorneys were waiting to understand whether and how she would recover before determining their next legal move.

They continued asking Governor Lee to commute her sentence.

Kurthers also remained on death row without a new execution date.

And Tennessee’s execution system was effectively paused.

But the largest question may no longer be about either individual prisoner.

It may be about the protocol itself.

Execution procedures are written around expected sequences.

Establish the IV.

Administer the drug.

Confirm death.

If the expected outcome does not occur, use the prescribed backup.

But Pike’s case reached the point beyond the backup.

That is where the certainty disappeared.

And when the government exercises the power to deliberately end a person’s life, “we had no next step” is not a minor administrative gap.

It is potentially the most important contingency of all.

The investigation now has to determine whether Tennessee truly reached that point because the protocol itself was inadequate or because something earlier in the process failed.

Perhaps an IV malfunctioned.

Perhaps drug delivery did not occur as intended.

Perhaps investigators will identify another medical explanation.

Perhaps personnel departed from the protocol.

Or perhaps they followed it precisely and discovered that the written procedure was not designed for the outcome they encountered.

The source does not yet allow any of those explanations to be declared the answer.

What it does allow is a reconstruction of the night.

At 7:26, the curtain opened.

At 7:34, Pike complained about her arm.

Around 7:37, witnesses saw large breaths.

Around 7:45, they saw a yawn.

At 7:46, the curtain closed.

At 7:49, it reopened.

Witnesses heard loud, rhythmic snoring.

Around 8:05, the curtain closed again.

It never reopened for them.

By approximately 8:26, the second medication procedure had reportedly occurred.

At 8:53, the witnesses were ordered out while they could still hear Pike breathing.

Around 9:15, ambulances arrived.

Around 9:28, they left Riverbend.

Pike was transported to a hospital.

Hours later, Tennessee said it had followed the lawful protocol.

And the protocol allowed no additional execution procedure beyond what had already been done.

That statement may ultimately matter more than any speculation about what went wrong.

Because Tennessee’s own position, as presented in this source, creates the question investigators cannot avoid.

If the state followed every authorized step and Christa Pike was still alive when those steps were exhausted, what exactly was supposed to happen next?

On September 30, Tennessee found out.

There was no next execution step.

There was an ambulance.