Tennessee Failed to Execute Christa Pike Twice and Marsha Blackburn Wants the Electric Chair Back

May Martinez traveled from Florida to Nashville to watch the woman who tortured and murdered her daughter finally die.

That didn't happen.

Now Colleen Slemmer's mother is calling the botched execution "a mess" – and she's right, but she doesn't know the half of it.

Christa Pike's Lethal Injection Failed Twice at Riverbend Prison

Christa Pike has been on Tennessee's death row for 30 years, convicted in one of the most depraved murders in the state's history.

In January 1995, Pike and two accomplices lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into the woods near Knoxville, tortured her for up to an hour, cut her with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her skin, and crushed her skull with a chunk of asphalt.

Pike kept a piece of Slemmer's skull as a trophy and showed it off at school the next morning.

Three decades later, Tennessee still couldn't kill her.

Wednesday night, state officials strapped Pike to a gurney at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and administered the lethal injection drug pentobarbital.

Minutes later, she was still conscious, lifting her head off the gurney to ask staff whether the burning in her arm was normal.

They gave her a second dose.

She kept breathing.

Media witnesses described hearing Pike snoring behind a curtain as prison staff scrambled – and then silence as officials shut down the viewing window and called it off.

Pike was rushed by ambulance to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

May Martinez, who had waited 31 years for this moment, told NBC News it was "a mess."

That's an understatement.

Tennessee's Second Botched Execution in Four Months

This was completely predictable.

In May 2026, Tennessee called off the execution of Tony Carruthers after the execution team failed to establish IV access.

After that failure, Governor Bill Lee issued Carruthers a one-year reprieve but left the lethal injection protocol unchanged.

He didn't halt executions then.

He pushed forward with the same broken system – right into Wednesday night's disaster.

Now Lee has ordered a "comprehensive, third-party review" and halted Tennessee's remaining 2026 executions.

The state's own protocol has no instructions for what to do when both doses of pentobarbital fail – because nobody wrote that chapter.

Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher called Pike's case "singular and unparalleled" – one of only seven known instances where an execution team has failed to access a vein to deliver the lethal drugs.

Nobody wanted that record.

Marsha Blackburn Calls for Return of the Electric Chair

Senator Marsha Blackburn – who is running for governor of Tennessee – didn't waste time on careful language.

"Christa Pike should have been executed long ago," Blackburn said Thursday.

She said the botched execution has only extended the suffering of Colleen Slemmer's family, and that Tennessee needs to bring back the electric chair to make sure this never happens again.

"As your governor, I will do just that," Blackburn said.

She's right.

Pharmaceutical companies – under sustained pressure from radical anti-death-penalty activists – have systematically refused to sell their drugs for executions, forcing states into the compounded pentobarbital gamble that just failed twice in Tennessee in 2026 alone.

That's not an accident. It's the left's strategy working exactly as designed.

Trump Already Expanded Execution Methods Beyond Lethal Injection

Trump already figured this out.

In April 2026, the Trump administration expanded federal execution protocols to include firing squads, electrocution, and nitrogen gas – because the White House understood that dependence on pharmaceutical companies to carry out death sentences is a strategic vulnerability exploited by the left.

Idaho made the firing squad its primary execution method in July 2026.

South Carolina carried out the first modern firing squad execution in 2025.

Alabama has carried out multiple nitrogen gas executions, and federal courts have consistently upheld the method as constitutional.

None of these methods depend on European drug companies that have cut off pharmaceutical access to American prisons.

The left called nitrogen gas barbaric before Alabama carried it out anyway.

They'll say the same about the electric chair.

What's actually barbaric is what May Martinez endured Wednesday night – traveling to Nashville to finally see her murdered daughter receive justice, watching prison officials scramble in confusion, and going home without the closure she's been waiting three decades to receive.

The only "cruel and unusual punishment" on display Wednesday night was what Tennessee inflicted on that grieving mother.

Colleen Slemmer would have turned 51 in September 2026.

Christa Pike still has a pulse.

Tennessee owes the Slemmer family better than this.

Sources:

• Landon Mion, Michael Ruiz, and Brittany Miller, "Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survives 2 lethal injection doses in failed execution attempt," Fox News, September 30, 2026.
• "Blackburn calls to reinstate electric chair after botched lethal injections," Washington Examiner, October 1, 2026.
• "'Bring back the electric chair': Sen. Blackburn has a solution to botched lethal injection," Just the News, October 1, 2026.
• "TN lawmakers react after failed execution of Christa Pike," WKRN, October 1, 2026.
• "Trump approves electrocutions, firing squads and gassing for U.S. federal executions," CP24/Reuters, April 24, 2026.
• "'Shouldn't have taken 31 years': Victim's niece voices frustration before Christa Pike's botched execution," WSMV, October 1, 2026.
• "Christa Pike is alive and receiving life-saving medical care after surviving 2 lethal injections, attorney says," Associated Press via Yahoo News, October 1, 2026.
• Associated Press, "Court halts execution of Christa Gail Pike for a Tennessee murder she committed at age 18," PBS NewsHour, September 30, 2026.