Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy had been fielding media requests all day. In between phone calls, on Oct. 1, she was praying for Christa Pike.
Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy is the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, a restorative justice group working to abolish capital punishment. Ms. Pike is a Tennessee woman hospitalized after two failed attempts to execute her by lethal injection ended with frantic attempts to save her life by the same state that just tried to end it.
“We’ve been following Christa Pike’s case for a number of months,” Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said. “Like everyone else, [we were] kept in the dark for that period of time when she went into the chamber.… And then, you know, all hell broke loose.”
According to a statement from the Death Penalty Information Center, “Christa Pike remained alive for more than an hour after the state of Tennessee began its attempt to execute her on September 30, 2026.” The D.P.I.C. tracks data and provides analysis of capital punishment in the United States.
“According to media witnesses and her attorneys’ court filing, she received two lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital but continued to breathe and have a heartbeat,” the D.P.I.C. reported.
Ms. Pike was taken to a hospital and later listed in critical condition.
“We have, unfortunately, a lot of examples that point to why the death penalty should be ended once and for all—the number of botched executions, the cases of innocence, the fact that there are exonerations of people on death row,” Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said. “There’s just so much that points to the fact that we don’t need to throw people away or take lives to prove that taking life is wrong.”
Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said the opacity around the proceedings during Ms. Pike’s attempted execution was particularly disturbing.
“We really don’t know what all happened to her last night,” she said.
“She was given [lethal injection]; it didn’t work, so they went to plan B, and they gave her a second. There is no plan C, so they did not know what to do when she wasn’t dying. And now she’s at the hospital. They’re trying to save her life. It’s just absolutely stunning.”
“Tennessee largely carries out executions in secret, so the public learns of failures only through witnesses whose observations are limited,” the D.P.I.C. said in its statement.
“Media witnesses are blocked from viewing key portions of the process, including the insertion of IV lines. State officials refuse to disclose the source of the drugs they obtain, or how they are stored and tested.”
According to the D.P.I.C., Ms. Pike’s lawyers had been concerned that state penal officials had failed to account for any emergencies that might arise during the execution.
The center has documented seven people who have survived failed attempts to execute them after penal staff “were unable to establish IV lines.” It reports: “Ms. Pike is the first person to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs.”
“This failed attempt is the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” Robin M. Maher, the center’s executive director, said.
Following the incident, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee suspended executions for the rest of the year and announced that a third-party, independent investigation will be conducted into what happened in the botched execution.
This is not the first time an execution has failed in the state. In May, the execution of Tony Carruthers was called off after executioners could not find a vein after trying for an hour. The incidents have led to increased scrutiny of Tennessee’s lethal injection procedures, with various critics calling for a re-evaluation of the system. After Mr. Carruthers’s failed execution, nine state senators called on Mr. Lee to instigate an independent review of the state’s execution procedures.
Seven bishops in Tennessee from Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran churches published an open letter to Mr. Lee on Oct. 1, urging him to commute Ms. Pike’s sentence. “The events surrounding Tennessee’s attempted execution of Ms. Pike make this appeal even more urgent,” the bishops wrote.
“Our churches have long and consistently opposed capital punishment,” the letter states. “These convictions arise from the heart of our Christian faith.”
The bishops added: “We make this appeal mindful of the horrific murder of Colleen Slemmer and the immeasurable grief endured by her family and those who loved her. Nothing in our request diminishes the gravity of that crime, the preciousness of Colleen’s life, or the legitimate responsibility of the state to hold those who commit violence accountable.”
Human rights groups and anti-death penalty advocates have long argued that executions by lethal injection could violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Ms. Pike was 20 when she was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19 at the time of her death. Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, 17 at the time of the crime, had lured Ms. Slemmer into the woods in Knoxville. They tortured and beat her to death. The three had met at a job training camp for troubled teens.
Ms. Pike’s case has attracted particular attention because she would have been the first woman to be executed by the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years.
After decades of appeals, leading up to a denial of clemency by Mr. Lee on Monday, her execution was scheduled for Sept. 30.
In the wake of the botched execution, attorneys for Ms. Pike called on the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison.
As she prays for Ms. Pike, Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said she is also keeping May Martinez, Ms. Slemmer’s mother, in her prayers. She and Ms. Martinez did not agree on Ms. Pike’s execution. Ms. Martinez has called for it for decades while Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy leads a national campaign against all capital punishment.
Still, Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said she empathized with the pain Ms. Martinez must have experienced sitting on the other side of the curtain as a witness during Wednesday night’s catastrophe.
“I cannot imagine how retraumatizing that is for Colleen Slemmer’s mother,” she said.
Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said she is also praying for the discernment of Mr. Lee.
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