Christa Pike remains alive but unconscious and intubated after her failed execution on Wednesday, her lawyers said.
Page B1From§Eachthe midnight edition — 4 October 2026
Tennessee hired a prison chief with four botched executions in the file, got the fifth on Wednesday and the resignation on Saturday; the Justice Department spent the same week asking the judge who struck its press ban to restore it on grounds of professionalism.
As it ran on the front
The file came first. Lawyers for Christa Pike count five botched executions under Frank Strada's leadership across two states since 2022. Four of those five were in Arizona, where Strada oversaw the state's executions, and all four were on the books before Tennessee hired Strada to run its prisons. The New York Times reported Saturday that the hire went through anyway. That is the first entry on this page, and it is dated earlier than everything under it.
The booking came next. Truthout reported on September 22 that the lethal injection was set for September 30. On September 26 the New York Post reported the state had slated an all-female team to carry it out; Pike's attorneys had written in their petition, "Christa was broken, not evil." On Tuesday, September 29, the Supreme Court declined to stop the execution, clearing the way for Tennessee's first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.…
…(cont) Wednesday morning, with witnesses already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, a Sixth Circuit panel voted 2-1 to halt it an hour before the scheduled time, to review Pike's allegations that she had been sexually abused and raped. The Supreme Court lifted that stay the same day, over the dissent of three justices. Tennessee proceeded Wednesday night with two injections of pentobarbital, each of which was supposed to be lethal. Forty minutes after the double dose, the Guardian reported, she was alive and snoring.
Christa Pike, 50, was hospitalized Wednesday and remained unconscious and on a ventilator Friday, her attorneys said, while hospital staff worked to clear the pentobarbital from her system.
Then the reviews, all of them after the fact. Thursday: Governor Bill Lee called it "deeply disturbing," and United Nations human rights experts urged the state not to try again. Saturday: the Guardian published the count of five, the Times published the hiring file, and Strada was out. Court documents say Pike thought her arm would "burst open"; her experts describe pentobarbital as caustic and highly alkaline, burning flesh, tissue and veins on contact, akin to "bleach" or "Drano." The Guardian's sentence for what the week produced is the first death row prisoner in the US to be injected with lethal drugs and survive.
An independent inquiry is what an institution buys when it decides to read a record late. On September 24, Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by this president, ordered the White House to immediately restore the press credentials of reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico, finding the outlets likely to succeed on their claim that the ban and the revocation violated Fifth Amendment due process. On October 3, the Justice Department asked Kelly to put the ban back, arguing that access to the White House complex is a privilege and not a constitutional right, and that the three outlets had failed to meet "standards of professionalism." September 24 to October 3: one finding, then one motion to set the finding aside, filed with the judge who made it.
So the week ran two standards. The standard the department applied to three newsrooms was professionalism. The standard Tennessee applied to a hiring file was four botched executions and a signature.
Reconcile those and the difference is four. Four entries in the record before the appointment, and zero of them in the decision to make it. That is not a gap in the applicant's file, hon; the applicant's file was complete and correct. It is a gap in the employer's, and the employer is the state — which has now suspended its executions, ordered its inquiry, and will pay for both out of the same column it paid the salary from.
The receipts
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Thursday called on Tennessee to reintroduce the electric chair for executions after death-row prisoner Christa Pike survived two lethal injections the day before. Blackburn, who is the GOP nominee in the Volunteer State's gubernatorial race, called the botched execution “tragic”
This represents the second failed attempt at an execution via lethal injection in Tennessee this year alone.
He expressed disbelief that Pike survived the two rounds of lethal injection, becoming the first person in history to survive that death penalty method.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced in July that President Trump had fired Roger Rogoff as the U.S. attorney in Seattle, less than an hour after he was sworn into the post.
Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada he will resign days after the execution of Christa Pike was botched, the governor said.
The botched lethal injection of Christa Pike led to the halting of all scheduled executions in the state.
Also, the Supreme Court will review Trump’s migrant detention policy. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.
The execution drug, pentobarbital, is a caustic, highly alkaline chemical that burns human flesh, tissue and veins on contact, akin to household chemicals like "bleach" or "Drano," Pike’s experts say.
A federal judge has ordered a U.S. attorney from Western Washington who was fired by President Donald Trump in July to immediately be reinstated to the position.
United Nations human rights experts on Thursday joined the growing chorus of people around the world outraged by Tennessee's two botched attempts to execute Christa Pike and called on the state to refrain from trying again to kill the 50-year-old woman. After a last-minute legal battle , the US Supreme Court allowed Tennessee to execute…
Christa Pike is receiving medical care after Tennessee failed to execute her by lethal injection Wednesday night. Deborah Denno, a professor of law at Fordham Law School, joins "The Daily Report" to break down what could happen next.
Frank Strada will leave role next month after uproar over execution attempt, which sent Pike to hospital in critical condition Tennessee’s prison chief is resigning after the failed execution of Christa Pike, which lawyers say was the fifth “botched” execution under his leadership across two states since 2022. Frank Strada, the…
Tennessee inmate Christa Pike was in critical condition and receiving “lifesaving medical care” on Thursday, a day after surviving two failed lethal injection attempts by state executioners, according to her lawyers. Attorney Randy Spivey, who was present at the Wednesday execution attempt, said during a press conference that state…
“I’ve never seen anything like what we saw Wednesday night,” said one reporter who witnessed the execution attempt.
Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of a lethal injection drug during her attempted execution, her attorneys say. Officials are investigating what went wrong.
‘Critically ill but not in a coma.’
The death penalty is back center stage in national politics in the most macabre of circumstances. Christa Pike, 50, who admits to the gruesome 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer, is in critical condition in the hospital after Tennessee’s attempt to execute her Wednesday evening failed. The attempted execution had only proceeded at…
Frank Strada, who oversaw the process that left Christa Pike unconscious and hospitalized, quit as an independent review begins.
The Tennessee inmate was brought to a hospital with burned and blistered arms after an unsuccessful attempt at lethal injection, her lawyers said in a court filing.
Independent inquiry ordered after failed execution of Pike, who was convicted of 1994 murder Christa Pike: what we know so far about Tennessee woman’s failed execution Tennessee ’s governor on Thursday said it was “deeply disturbing” that his state botched the execution of a death row prisoner who remained alive and snoring 40 minutes…
Tennessee's botched execution of Christa Pike is renewing scrutiny over how states carry out the death penalty and raising questions about what legal recourse exists when that protocol goes awry. The attempt mirrors recent failures in other states, where inmates and their lawyers have argued in court that such errors amount to cruel…
Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital in a botched Tennessee execution, and her lawyers now urge Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence.
Christa Pike was taken to a hospital after the failed attempts to put her to death in Tennessee on Wednesday night. Her condition was not known and officials have not said how she survived the deadly doses of pentobarbital.
The prison commissioner in the southern US state of Tennessee has resigned over the failed execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike, Governor Bill Lee has said.
State legislators and the courts have turned the death penalty into a grimly farcical process, feeding the cheapest arguments against it. The attempted execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee showcases this fact. For full context, an 18-year-old Pike and an accomplice lured Colleen Slemmer into the woods, tortured her with a box cutter…
Christa Pike remains unconscious on a ventilator after Tennessee's botched lethal injection as attorneys file to preserve execution evidence.
It is a scandal that Christa Pike’s execution was botched, but we must ask whose fault that was.
The lawyers for a Tennessee woman who survived an execution attempt said on Friday she is unconscious and intubated following the failed procedure this week. Christa Pike, 50, was scheduled for execution on Wednesday, but is still alive after two attempts to end her life by lethal injection. Both attempts failed, and Pike’s lawyer said…
A federal judge restored Roger Rogoff as the top federal prosecutor in Seattle on Thursday, ruling that President Donald Trump could not fire a U.S. attorney whom district judges had appointed less than an hour earlier. U.S.
Three-quarters of nations have rightly abolished capital punishment in law or practice, but killing by the state has surged in the US What is the kindest way to kill? That’s the question being asked once more following Tennessee’s failed attempts to execute Christa Pike for the brutal murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was…
Tennessee attempted to carry out the death sentence imposed on Christa Pike on Wednesday. The state administered its prescribed lethal-injection procedure. Pike survived.
Christa Pike’s lethal injection is booked for September 30. She may be the first woman Tennessee executes in 200 years.
The failed execution of Christa Pike has prompted new scrutiny of Frank Strada, who resigned as the state’s top prison official on Saturday, and his past role overseeing executions in Arizona.
Christa Pike's botched lethal injection could end capital punishment in Tennessee altogether, warns former Knoxville Police chief Phil Keith.
The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to reinstate President Donald Trump’s ban on CNN, MS Now, and Politico journalists’ access to the White House, arguing that access to the White House is a privilege, not a constitutional right. The filing comes after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, temporarily blocked…
Trump administration lawyers are fighting back against CNN, MS NOW and Politico's attempt to prevent the White House from enforcing futures bans against them — with the Justice Department (DOJ) now arguing the three outlets failed to meet “professional" standards. “The President concluded that they have failed to maintain basic minimum…
Gov. Bill Lee ordered a review of the state’s lethal injection process after the botched attempt to execute the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row.
Pike's lawyers said the failure "goes far beyond any one person". Pike is in critical condition after surviving two lethal injections.
A federal appellate court on Wednesday morning temporarily blocked Tennessee from executing Christa Pike, as witnesses had already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the state's first execution of a woman in centuries. A panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled 2-1 to halt the…
Tennessee gave death row inmate Christa Pike two doses of a lethal drug, but somehow she survived. NBC News’ Jesse Kirsch reports.
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled the Trump administration must turn over a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo that legally authorizes the Pentagon’s lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer rejected two of the administration’s three arguments to keep the document secret in a 66-page opinion…
The Tennessee prison chief who oversaw the botched execution of murderer Christa Pike has stepped down from the position.
Failed attempt to execute 50-year-old prompts review of state’s execution practices. Plus the California woman who is allergic to cold Good morning. Tennessee’s governor has suspended executions as Christa Pike’s lawyer says the state’s failed lethal injection execution attempt has left her in a critical condition.
Attorneys say hospital staff are working to clear pentobarbital she was administered from her system Christa Pike remained hospitalized, unconscious and on a machine helping her breathe after her failed execution in Tennessee, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday. The attorneys said hospital staff were working to save Pike’s life…
Medicalizing and sanitizing capital punishment erase the deterrence it is supposed to create.
· After failed execution, health workers say Tennessee's method flouts medical ethics from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court Allows Execution of Christa Pike, Tennessee’s Lone Woman on Death Row from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Federal court halts Christa Pike's execution from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Sunday Shows Preview: Trump bans 3 media outlets from White House; Parties make final cases as midterms approach from the morgue, 19 Sep 2026
· Vance defends White House media ban: ‘Politico is as anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-Obama or anti-Biden’ from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
· Vance defends Trump's media ban as 'totally appropriate' from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
· Bill Clinton: 'There were lots of times when I wanted to ban the White House press corps' from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court declines Christa Pike's clemency appeal, with Tennessee set to execute first woman in 200 years from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go forward from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Tennessee court makes last minute move to temporarily halt Christa Pike's execution from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Trump White House Restores Access to Politico, MS NOW, CNN Reporters Hours After Judge's Order from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Judge orders White House to restore media access temporarily for blocked outlets from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters regain entry to White House from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Christa Pike’s Tennessee execution halted by court an hour before it was scheduled from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Tennessee inmate survived two lethal injections, her lawyer says in motion to halt execution from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· Tennessee prepares to execute the first woman in over 200 years from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· States should not blindly Alabama's use of execution by nitrogen from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· Lone woman death row inmate Christa Pike says she’s ‘at peace’ ahead of execution — as Tennessee gov. denies last-ditch bid for clemency from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Fourth Circuit worried Trump’s US attorney appointments unlawfully cut out Senate from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· Judge blocks Trump executive order banning ‘birth tourism’ from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· The Supreme Court of the United States rules 5–4 to lift the block on four federal executions scheduled for July and August. Convicted murderer Daniel Lewis Lee, whose execution was scheduled for the from the morgue, 14 Jul 2020
· The Supreme Court of the United States refuses to vacate a stay of execution issued by the Arkansas Supreme Court. Arkansas's highest court has also put on hold the execution of another inmate, Bruce from the morgue, 18 Apr 2017
· CNN, MS Now, and Politico ask judge to extend order pausing Trump’s ban from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Trump administration asks Supreme Court to OK transgender inmate policy from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· https://www.foxnews.com/health/what-know-pentobarbital-death-row-inmate-survives-2-lethal-injection-doses the receipt
· United States district court judge Jeremy Fogel imposes a moratorium on lethal injections in California stating that they are unconstitutional. In an unrelated incident, the Governor of Florida Jeb Bu from the morgue, 15 Dec 2006
· John Marek becomes the 68th death row inmate in the state of Florida, United States to be executed by lethal injection since the death sentence was re-instated in 1979.(Miami Herald) from the morgue, 19 Aug 2009
· U.S. President Joe Biden commutes the death sentences of 37 out of the 44 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment. The exceptions are Dylann Roof, Robert Gregory Bowers, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, from the morgue, 23 Dec 2024
· The death penalty: 50 years after reinstatement from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· After nitrogen execution blocked, Alabama inmate to die by lethal injection from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/6122386-bill-lee-tennessee-executions-halt-christa-pike-case/ the receipt
· https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/6122593-christa-pike-failed-execution-tennessee/ the receipt
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.