There have been over 30 'botched' lethal injections in 26 years as Christa Pike suffers major failing

Christa Pike’s botched execution has raised a number of questions, including how many times something similar has happened to other death row prisoners.

The 50-year-old was scheduled to die via lethal injection at 10am local time on Wednesday (30 September) for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at age 18.

Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, however, the procedure ran into a number of challenges.

An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was due to start, but hours later the US Supreme Court overturned that stay.

Then, officials were unable to put Pike to death after administering two doses of a lethal drug.

Media witnesses who were observing from a separate room said that officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7.27pm, showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

Christa Pike's execution failed and she was transported to hospital (Tennessee Department of Corrections)

In her ‘last’ words, she said: “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is in love.”

However, after being injected with the drugs, Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way.

By 8.26pm, execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered; however, she continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8.53pm.

Media were escorted out, and Pike was rushed to hospital, with one of her attorneys telling the BBC that she was ‘being provided life-saving measures’.

READ MORE: A full timeline of the Christa Pike case

(Tyla/Tennessee/Idaho/Alabama/Ohio Department of Correction)

According to the Death Penalty Information Centre, there have been 32 botched executions via lethal injection since 2000.

In May this year, officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, also in Tennessee, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

As outlined by the website, he was set to be the first American in over a century to be executed after representing himself at trial, and reasonable doubt remained about his guilt.

Tony Carruthers' execution was also botched and called off earlier this year (Tennessee Department of Correction)

However, he was granted a one-year reprieve from death after the Tennessee Department of Corrections stopped its attempts.

Before this, in May 2024, Thomas Creech’s execution failed after the team tried and failed eight times to insert a functional IV, trying to insert the catheter in his ​‘arms, legs, hands and feet’.

Ahead of Pike’s execution, her lawyer revealed that she has a history of difficult blood draws and was scared of what could happen if they needed to use a central line.

He told NewsChannel9: "Her biggest fear is not the fear of dying. It's the fear of that process."

Thomas Creech's laywers say he was jabbed 10 times with a needle before the execution was called off (Tennessee Department of Corrections)

Botched lethal injections in the US since 2000

1. Christina Marie Riggs - 3 May, 2000. Arkansas
2. Bennie Demps - 8 June, 2000. Florida
3. Claude Jones - 7 December, 2000. Texas
4. Bert Leroy Hunter - 28 June, 2000. Missouri
5. Jose High - 7 November, 2001. Georgia
6. Joseph L. Clark - 2 May, 2006. Ohio
7. Angel Diaz - 13 December, 2006. Florida
8. Christopher Newton - 24 May, 2007. Ohio
9. John Hightower - 26 June, 2007. Georgia
10. Curtis Osborne - 4 June, 2008. Georgia
11. Romell Broom - 15 September, 2009. Ohio
12. Brandon Joseph Rhode - 27 September, 2010. Georgia
13. Dennis McGuire - 16 January, 2014. Ohio
14. Clayton D. Lockett - 29 April, 2014. Oklahoma
15. Joseph R. Wood - 23 July, 2014. Arizona
16. Brian Keith Terrell - 9 December, 2015. Georgia
17. Brandon Jones - 3 February, 2016. Georgia
18. Ronald Bert Smith, Jr. - 8 December, 2016. Alabama
19. Ricky Javon Gray - 13 January, 2017. Virginia
20. Torrey McNabb - 19 October, 2017. Alabama
21. Alva Campbell - 15 November, 2017. Ohio
22. Doyle Lee Hamm - 22 February, 2018. Alabama
23. John Marion Grant - 28 October, 2021. Oklahoma
24. Clarence Dixon - 11 May, 2022. Arizona
25. Frank Atwood - 8 June, 2022. Arizona
26. Joe Nathan James, Jr. - 28 July, 2022. Alabama
27. Alan Eugene Miller - 22 September, 2022. Alabama
28. Stephen Barbee - 16 November, 2022. Texas
29. Murray Hooper - 16 November, 2022. Arizona.
30. Kenneth Eugene Smith - 17 November, 2022. Alabama
31. Thomas Creech - 28 February, 2024. Idaho
32. Tony Carruthers - 21 May, 2026. Tennessee
33. Christa Pike - 30 September, 2026. Tennessee