Tennessee governor orders third-party review, pause all executions for the rest of the year

​Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a third-party review of the botched execution of Christa Pike and put a hold on state executions for the rest of the year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” said Lee in a statement.

The execution of Gary Wayne Suitton is ordered for Dec. 3, but Lee said he pausing executions for the rest of 2026. Lee is term-limited and leaving office in January. 

On Wednesday, Tennessee was forced to halt the execution of Pike after two failed rounds of its lethal injection protocol. The botched execution took more than two hours, with media witnesses told to leave the building, when Pike could still be heard audibly “snoring.”

“I cannot emphasize enough how much of whatever just happened happened behind a closed curtain,” said Steven Hale of the Nashville Banner, a media witness during his report to the public. “When Christa Pike was still alive, we could still hear her breathing, but we could not see what was going on.”

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike receiving medical care after failed execution

Pike was then taken by ambulance to a hospital for treatment, after her federal public defenders filed an emergency appeal to end the execution.

Pike, 50, was set to be the first female put to death in Tennessee in nearly two centuries for the killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer. Her lawyers have been appealing to the court to pause the execution for a review of Pike’s history of sexual abuse and neglect as a child, which they say was not adequately addressed during the penalty phase in her 1996 trial.

Pike was 18 years old when she and her then-17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer in a wooded area in Knoxville. Shipp, ineligible for the death penalty because of his age, got a life sentence.

Before Wednesday’s last-minute pause, the nation’s highest court and Lee, a Republican, had declined to intervene to stop Pike’s execution.

Pike’s execution is the latest to be botched by the Tennessee Department of Correction.

In May, Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution of Tony Von Carruthers after a physician tried for more than an hour to insert backup and central intravenous lines on Carruthers, as required by protocol. Witnesses called it a bloody “torture.”

This story may be updated.

Cassandra Stephenson contributed to this report