# The Man Who Wrote Death Penalty Law Says Christa Pike’s Botched Execution Was “Almost Inevitable”

David Raybin helped write the Tennessee death-penalty statute that still shapes capital cases in the state today.

So when Tennessee tried and failed to execute Christa Pike on September 30, 2026, his reaction carried unusual weight.

He was not shocked.

In fact, he said something far more disturbing.

He suggested the disaster was “almost inevitable.”

Raybin, a longtime Tennessee criminal lawyer and former assistant attorney general, said the state had already experienced serious execution problems, had been warned about Pike’s difficult IV access, and still moved forward with a lethal-injection process that ended with the condemned prisoner alive, unconscious, and being rushed to a hospital.

Pike later regained consciousness.

She began speaking.

She began moving.

And suddenly Tennessee was confronting a question almost no modern American court has had to answer in these circumstances:

What happens when the state actually administers lethal execution drugs, the prisoner suffers severe injuries, and she still survives?

For Raybin, the answer begins with something much simpler.

The system failed.

And according to him, the warning signs were already there.

## The Lawyer Who Helped Write Tennessee’s Death-Penalty Law

Raybin’s connection to the death penalty goes back nearly half a century.

During the 1970s, he worked in the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office as states across the country were rewriting capital-punishment laws in response to major U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

The objective was to create a constitutional structure.

A jury would first decide guilt.

Then, during a separate sentencing phase, jurors would consider aggravating factors offered by prosecutors and mitigating evidence offered by the defense.

A death sentence required unanimity.

Raybin told the interviewer that the statute he helped draft remains on Tennessee’s books today.

At the time, Tennessee used electrocution.

Later, lethal injection was adopted as what officials presented as a more humane alternative.

That history makes Raybin’s reaction to Pike particularly striking.

The man who helped design a constitutional death-penalty structure now describes Tennessee’s execution system as deeply flawed.

## “I Was Not Surprised”

When asked what he thought after learning Pike had survived, Raybin did not describe disbelief.

He said he had expected trouble.

Tennessee had already experienced another failed execution attempt earlier in 2026.

Pike’s lawyers had repeatedly warned courts that her veins presented unusual difficulty.

And according to Raybin, recommendations arising from previous execution problems were not adequately implemented.

Then came September 30.

The state attempted to execute Pike using pentobarbital.

According to Pike’s lawyers and subsequent reporting, the execution team struggled repeatedly to establish IV access.

Pentobarbital was administered.

Then a second lethal dose was administered.

Pike did not die.

Instead, emergency medical personnel were called and she was taken to a hospital.

Raybin’s assessment was blunt:

“I suggest that it was almost inevitable that this happened.”

That does not establish medically why Pike survived.

The precise mechanism remains under investigation.

State officials have not issued a final public explanation.

Medical experts have focused on possible IV infiltration, meaning some or all of the drug may have entered surrounding tissue instead of circulating properly through the bloodstream.

But Raybin’s larger argument is about foreseeability.

Pike’s defense had warned that IV access could become the central problem.

Then IV access apparently became the central problem.

## “You Only Have One Job in That Room”

Perhaps Raybin’s strongest criticism concerned Tennessee’s defense that its execution team followed the approved protocol.

For him, that response proves very little.

If a protocol is followed and the result is catastrophic, he argued, officials cannot simply point back to the written instructions and declare success.

“You only have one job in that room,” he said.

That job was to carry out the execution.

Instead, Pike survived and required emergency treatment.

Raybin called the result a “damning indictment” of a system that should have been capable of functioning reliably.

Tennessee officials initially said the Department of Correction followed the state’s established execution protocol.

Governor Bill Lee nevertheless ordered an independent review after the failed execution, and the state halted further executions for the remainder of 2026. Correction Commissioner Frank Strada later resigned.

The contradiction is now at the heart of the investigation.

If the protocol was followed, why did the execution fail?

If it was not followed, who deviated from it?

And if Pike’s known medical issues made the protocol inadequate for her specifically, should Tennessee have proceeded at all?

## Pike’s Lawyers Had Already Warned About Her Veins

This point may become one of the most important parts of future litigation.

Before September 30, Pike’s lawyers argued that she had unusually difficult veins and a history of problems with blood draws and needle insertion.

They said that these characteristics increased the risk that a peripheral IV would fail.

According to later court filings, Pike herself complained during the execution that her arm felt as if it might burst.

Her attorneys said she arrived at the hospital with both arms swollen, burned, and blistered.

They alleged that the IV lines were improperly positioned or failed and that the pentobarbital entered surrounding tissue.

Those claims have not yet been established by a final court ruling.

But they are no longer merely hypothetical.

Pike survived.

She required ventilation.

She remained unconscious for days.

Then, six days after the execution attempt, she woke up and began speaking.

That sequence is why Raybin believes the case is fundamentally different from most earlier failed executions.

## She Survived the Actual Administration of Execution Drugs

There have been other failed execution attempts in the United States.

Execution teams have struggled to find veins.

Procedures have been stopped.

Prisoners have survived and later faced additional execution attempts.

But Pike’s case contains a crucial factual distinction.

The lethal drugs were actually administered.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center and current reporting, Pike is believed to be the first person in the modern U.S. era to survive after lethal-injection drugs were administered during an execution and the execution was then halted.

Raybin emphasized precisely that point.

“She survived an actual literal execution,” he said.

In his view, that makes her case materially different from one in which the state simply cannot establish IV access and stops before administering the drugs.

The difference could become central to an Eighth Amendment claim.

## The Eighth Amendment Is Now the Core Legal Question

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Pike’s lawyers argued before September 30 that her medical characteristics created a substantial risk of severe pain if lethal injection went wrong.

The courts allowed the execution to proceed.

Then the feared complications occurred.

Raybin says that changes the constitutional analysis.

He is not arguing that any failed execution automatically voids a death sentence.

American law contains precedent allowing a second attempt.

The most famous example is Willie Francis.

Francis survived a failed Louisiana electric-chair execution in 1946.

He challenged a second attempt.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Louisiana to proceed.

Francis was executed in 1947.

Raybin acknowledged that precedent.

But he argues Pike’s circumstances are different.

In Francis’s case, the machinery failed.

In Pike’s case, lethal chemicals were actually administered, followed by another dose, after which she suffered significant medical harm and still survived.

That distinction does not guarantee Pike will win an Eighth Amendment challenge.

But it gives her attorneys a factual record no modern death-row prisoner has apparently presented before.

## A Court Could Block Another Execution Without Freeing Her

This is another area where headlines can become misleading.

If a court eventually decides that executing Pike again would violate the Eighth Amendment, that would not necessarily mean she walks out of prison.

Raybin explicitly made this distinction.

A judge could potentially enjoin — legally block — another execution attempt while leaving the underlying death sentence in place.

Pike could remain incarcerated indefinitely.

She would not automatically receive a new trial.

Her murder conviction would remain.

She would not automatically be released.

The legal question would be whether Tennessee could try to carry out the execution again after what she already endured.

Raybin suggested that a federal court might view Pike’s case differently because the state had been warned about the precise medical risk that later materialized.

## The Evidence Preservation Order Could Determine What Happens Next

That is why Pike’s attorneys moved so quickly to preserve evidence from September 30.

They wanted everything.

Drugs.

Needles.

Syringes.

IV tubing.

Medical supplies.

Execution logs.

Electronic communications.

Witness records.

Surveillance material.

Anything that might explain what happened inside the chamber.

On October 7, Chancellor I’Ashea Myles ordered Tennessee officials to preserve evidence connected to the failed execution.

The order was deliberately broad.

The judge said the state should save materials from the execution room and prevent deletion or destruction of potentially relevant evidence.

Raybin strongly supported the ruling.

He said the judge recognized a basic problem:

The defense does not yet know what it does not know.

If an IV catheter contains physical evidence showing infiltration, that matters.

If drug residue can be analyzed, that matters.

If communications show officials recognized a problem before continuing, that matters.

If records show the opposite, that matters too.

The point of preservation is not to decide guilt in advance.

It is to prevent the evidence from disappearing before experts can examine it.

## Raybin Wants More Transparency

Tennessee restricts photography and recording of executions.

Historically, executions moved away from public spectacle partly to preserve dignity.

Raybin understands that rationale.

But he argues secrecy has gone too far.

The government itself documents executions.

There are logs.

Training records.

Protocols.

Internal communications.

Medical materials.

Yet outsiders often face major barriers trying to obtain those records.

For Raybin, transparency is necessary because execution is one of the most serious powers a government can exercise.

His argument is essentially this:

If the public is expected to trust the state with the power to kill, the public must be allowed to understand how that power is used.

“What is it that they’re so afraid that has to be revealed?” he asked.

That criticism has taken on greater urgency since Pike’s failed execution because state officials still have not provided a complete public explanation for why two lethal doses failed.

## The Victim’s Family Was Put Through Another Trauma

Raybin repeatedly returned to Colleen Slemmer’s family.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Slemmer.

Her relatives had waited more than three decades for the sentence to be carried out.

Instead, they experienced an execution that repeatedly stopped and restarted behind curtains.

Then an ambulance arrived.

The condemned prisoner left alive.

Raybin said the result was traumatic not only for Pike but for the victim’s family.

They came expecting finality.

Instead, the legal process expanded dramatically.

Evidence hearings.

Medical questions.

Constitutional challenges.

A third-party state investigation.

Potential civil litigation.

Possibly years of additional appeals.

“This is torture for the family,” Raybin said of the failed process.

That point complicates the usual argument that another execution attempt is necessary to provide closure.

A second attempt might produce finality.

It might also produce another failure and another round of litigation.

## Pike Could Also Sue

Raybin believes the preserved evidence could serve two different purposes.

First, it could support an Eighth Amendment challenge aimed at preventing another execution.

Second, it could potentially support a civil lawsuit seeking damages.

He described the potential lawsuit as strong if evidence ultimately supports allegations that officials disregarded serious medical risks or failed to recognize malfunctioning IV lines.

Again, that lawsuit has not yet produced a judgment establishing liability.

But preservation is essential if such a case is filed.

The equipment could reveal what occurred mechanically.

Records could reveal what officials knew.

Timing could reveal when the execution team realized Pike was not dying as expected.

Those details may determine whether the episode is legally characterized as an unforeseeable medical complication or something more serious.

## Her Access to Lawyers Became Another Dispute

Even after Pike woke up, litigation continued over her treatment in the hospital.

Her lawyers complained that they did not have reliable access to her.

They also sought better telephone access and the ability to have appropriate medical experts assess her condition.

Raybin found the dispute baffling.

Incarcerated people are hospitalized all the time.

Prisons routinely arrange lawyer access under security restrictions.

From his perspective, allowing Pike to communicate with counsel was not a special privilege.

It was ordinary legal access.

The judge ultimately intervened to clarify access procedures, including communication with Pike while she remained hospitalized.

That seemingly administrative dispute matters because Pike herself may now become one of the most important witnesses to the execution.

## She Can Describe What She Felt

Pike survived.

That means she may be able to describe sensations that a person successfully executed never could.

Needle placement.

Burning.

Pressure.

Pain.

Breathing difficulty.

What she heard.

When she lost consciousness.

What she remembers afterward.

Her account will not replace medical evidence.

Memory after critical illness can be incomplete.

Sedation, hypoxia, medication, and trauma can affect recall.

But her testimony could become part of the factual record in a future constitutional challenge.

Current reporting says Pike initially woke confused and angry, asking where she was, while her lawyers later reported some cognitive difficulties and uncertainty about her long-term recovery.

## “Death Penalty Is a Luxury”

Raybin’s broader criticism goes beyond Pike.

He argues that if Tennessee insists on maintaining capital punishment, it must spend enough money to administer it constitutionally.

That means competent defense lawyers.

Experts.

Reliable protocols.

Qualified personnel.

Transparent review.

And execution systems capable of functioning under real-world conditions.

His description is striking:

“Death penalty is a luxury.”

By that he means capital punishment is expensive precisely because constitutional safeguards are expensive.

Trying to save money at the front end can produce decades of litigation later.

Raybin argues that Tennessee has repeatedly failed to fund capital defense and expert assistance at the level necessary to create confidence in the system.

The Pike case, in his view, demonstrates the cost of that failure.

## What Happens to Tennessee’s Death Penalty Now?

Governor Bill Lee has paused executions for the remainder of 2026 and ordered an outside review.

For the moment, the state’s execution machinery is effectively frozen while officials investigate September 30.

Raybin predicts Tennessee lawmakers may reconsider lethal injection entirely.

That is his assessment, not an enacted policy.

The legislature has not abolished lethal injection.

Nor has Tennessee abolished the death penalty.

But Pike’s case has intensified debate over execution methods at a moment when capital punishment is already under renewed national scrutiny.

Whether Tennessee eventually moves toward electrocution, another injection protocol, some other authorized method, or fewer executions altogether remains unresolved.

## “Almost Inevitable”

That phrase now hangs over the entire case.

Almost inevitable.

Raybin is not saying Pike’s survival itself was predictable in every medical detail.

He is saying the disaster occurred after multiple warning signs.

Another failed Tennessee execution.

Concerns about IV access.

A prisoner with known difficulty having veins accessed.

Lawyers warning courts that the protocol could produce unnecessary suffering.

Then the state proceeded.

And what followed was exactly the kind of IV-related catastrophe Pike’s attorneys feared.

That is why the quote matters.

It transforms September 30 from a question about bad luck into a question about preventability.

Could officials reasonably have anticipated the problem?

Were adequate safeguards available?

Were warnings dismissed?

Did the team recognize the IV failure?

Why was another dose administered?

Those questions cannot be answered from the protocol alone.

They require evidence.

## And the Evidence Is Now Being Saved

The syringes remain important.

The IV equipment remains important.

The drugs remain important.

The messages remain important.

The training records remain important.

The hospital evidence remains important.

And Pike herself remains alive.

The state tried to execute her.

Her body survived.

The same government that minutes earlier had been attempting to cause her death had to call an ambulance and send her for lifesaving treatment.

For Raybin, that reversal captures the unprecedented nature of the case.

One moment, execution.

The next, rescue.

The death chamber became an emergency scene.

And now the entire event has become evidence.

Raybin helped write the law that gave Tennessee a modern framework for imposing death sentences.

Nearly fifty years later, he is warning that the machinery used to carry those sentences out has lost the confidence that a constitutional system requires.

He does not argue that Pike’s crime disappears.

He does not argue that Colleen Slemmer should be forgotten.

He argues that the government has obligations even when dealing with someone convicted of a horrific murder.

If Tennessee wants the power to execute, it must be able to administer that power lawfully, competently, and transparently.

September 30 did not demonstrate that.

It demonstrated the opposite.

Christa Pike entered the execution chamber under a lawful death sentence.

She received the drugs intended to kill her.

She survived.

And according to one of the lawyers who helped build Tennessee’s modern death-penalty system, the most frightening part may not be that the execution failed.

It is that, in his view, the failure should not have surprised anyone.