Tennessee looks to block Christa Pike’s lawyers to access the lethal injection drug used in her home execution failure on the grounds that doing so would reveal the supplier in violation of state law, according to court documents.
The request follows a judge’s order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit filed by Pike’s lawyers and reflects the secrecy surrounding execution drugs, which states often argue is necessary to protect access to drugs and the safety of suppliers.
Pike, 50 years old, survived two doses of pentobarbital in September, which his lawyers say likely did not enter his bloodstream properly and instead accumulated in his arms, leaving them burned and blistered. The state said it was complying with a broader order from Judge I’Ashea L. Myles. demanding the preservation of proof.
But in a filing Friday, the state asked the judge to vacate the portion of her order allowing Pike’s legal team to inspect, collect and test any leftover pentobarbital from the attempted execution.
Tennessee Department of Corrections Fears Losing Deadly Drug Supplier
In an affidavit cited in the state filing, a Tennessee Department of Corrections employee said the drug supplier would become identifiable if Pike’s legal team was allowed to handle the remaining pentobarbital vials from the execution attempt, or examine the vials’ labeling. The employee, whose name was not released, wrote that residue of the pentobarbital used in Pike’s botched execution “is most likely found” in the vials of the substance used in the attempted execution.
The employee said the state supplier was concerned that even if it redacted the labels, the source of the pentobarbital would not be identifiable. The employee said another supplier stopped communicating with the department in 2024 after its identity was revealed and that the state would likely be unable to find other suppliers if it lost access to its current source of the drug.
“Pike’s attorneys and experts cannot be permitted to view, handle, or obtain information about the remaining vials of pentobarbital from Pike’s attempted execution,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wrote in a court filing.
Tennessee law prohibits public disclosure of any person or entity involved in acquiring deadly substances or carrying out executions.
The head of the Tennessee Department of Corrections resigned immediately of the failed execution attempt.
In a court filing last month, Pike’s lawyers said his veins may have ruptured before he was injected with pentobarbital. The execution team used about 10 needles and tried multiple IV sites on both arms, his lawyers said in the filing.
Pike’s lawyer says access to deadly drug is essential
Luke Ihnen, an attorney representing Pike, said publicly identifying the state’s lethal injection drug supplier “was never the goal” of the litigation.
He said it was important that Pike’s legal team was able to examine how the pentobarbital used in his botched execution was labeled and stored to understand whether there were any problems with how it was mixed, transported or handled, and whether it was expired.
“We still don’t know exactly what happened that night,” Ihnen said. “Those kinds of things are all valuable information about what went wrong.”
Tennessee Department of Corrections spokeswoman Dorinda Carter declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Governor-elect calls for alternative methods of execution
The pike was hospitalized on ventilator during the days following the failed execution. Her attorneys said that at the time she was suffering from pneumonia, a blood clot, was unable to swallow and was unable to move her arms or hands once she regained consciousness at a Tennessee hospital.
She returned to prison and says she is in constant pain.
In a statement she released Exactly a month after surviving the botched execution, Pike said she entered the execution chamber after saying goodbye and “did not consider life beyond that night.”
“A few days later, I woke up alone in a hospital, confused and in pain,” she said in a statement dictated to her lawyers. “There hasn’t been a moment since that night that I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still have trouble speaking. And the pain isn’t just physical. There’s pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike is the only person known to have survived an execution attempt in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike and her boyfriend tortured and stabbed to death a 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995. Pike was 18 at the time, making her one of the youngest women on death row. Slemmer’s mother had come from Florida to witness Pike’s execution.
Frank Strada, Commissioner of the Department of Correction, announced his resignation following the failed execution of Pike. The governor named Christopher Hansen as acting commissioner.
Pike’s failed execution raised questions about Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, marking the second execution problem in the state this year. In May, death row inmate Tony Carruthers received a year-long reprieve after officials spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to establish an IV line.
CBS News reviewed state lethal injection protocols dating back to 2007 and found that as the years went by, the protocols became increasingly vague.
Prior to 2025, Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols were detailed at 100 pages and included detailed protocols. But in the most recent version, made public early last year, there were just 44 pages to guide members of the execution team through the process.
Tennessee suspended its executions in 2022 to investigate its lethal injection procedure. She resumed them in 2025, performing three of them with a deadly new cocktail consisting of a single drug, pentobarbital, rather than the combination of three she previously used.
Pike’s lawyers want Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who is due to leave office in January, to replace his death sentence with life in prison.
“The least that can happen now is we at least take death off the table and start looking at what the future could be for her,” one of Pike’s attorneys, Steve Ferrell, told “CBS Mornings” last month.
He said she would remain on death row unless a court rules otherwise. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the state’s Republican governor-elect, has called on the state to explore other methods of execution, including the electric chair.
The governor tapped a former U.S. attorney to lead an independent investigation into the failed execution, and canceled the remaining executions scheduled in Tennessee for the remainder of the year.
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