Christa Pike’s family breaks silence after failed execution: ‘When God puts his hand on someone’

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: Christa Pike’s family thought they were saying goodbye when she was taken for execution, but days later, they were facing a completely different reality.

Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital on September 30 and later woke up after doctors reportedly told her family she was brain dead. Now, her aunt Carrie Ross, who helped raise Pike and says she loves her “as a daughter,” has revealed the emotional chaos that followed the botched execution.

“It’s been up, down, up, down. I have cried more tears in the last week than I’ve cried in my whole life,” Ross said. “This whole week has been a blur.”

Christa Pike’s family reacts to failed execution

Ross had wanted to be with Pike when she was put to death after three decades on Tennessee’s death row.

But Pike asked her to stay away, telling her, “Aunt Carrie, I really don't want you to come because it's just gonna be painful for you. And it's painful for me - I don't want you to remember me that way.” Ross agreed.

“Okay, Christa, I love you. See you later and I'll meet you on the other side,” she told her niece.

On September 29, Pike was transferred to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution for death watch ahead of her September 30 execution. But the execution did not go as planned.

Pike was given a lethal dose of pentobarbital. When it failed to kill her, a second dose was administered. She still survived.

Witnesses recalled hearing Pike snoring behind a curtain as they were led out of the execution chamber. “When they said she's still breathing, we got excited thinking that she was going to make it,” Ross said.

Christa Pike wakes after failed execution

The family’s hope soon turned to fear again. On Monday, October 5, Ross said the family was told doctors had declared Pike brain dead.

She said doctors were preparing to take Pike off her ventilator and let her die at 1 o’clock. But Pike did not die. She woke up on Tuesday, October 6, and began talking, asking where she was and who the doctors were.

Her family has not been able to speak directly with her and has instead received updates through her lawyers.

“We know that Christa knows who she is and where she is,” Ross said.

Pike’s attorneys say she now faces a long recovery. She has pneumonia and a blood clot in her arm, cannot swallow and has no movement in her swollen arms.

Ross believes Pike’s survival was a sign that God did not want her to die. “When God puts his hand on someone, God is in control,” she said. “Not the Department of Correction, not us, but God.”

Family opposes second Christa Pike execution attempt

Pike’s survival has left her death sentence uncertain.

Her lawyers are renewing calls for clemency from Governor Bill Lee, while death penalty opponents are questioning whether a second execution attempt would be constitutional. Ross strongly opposes another attempt.

“That would be horrible. Torture. Don't do that to a human,” she said. “She has completed her execution. She went willingly.”

Ross wants Pike’s sentence commuted to life without the possibility of parole, while acknowledging the seriousness of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

“None of us excuse what she did,” Ross said. “We know she committed a horrible, heinous crime, and she has to pay the price for that.”

Ross also said Pike regretted the killing, recalling a conversation days afterward when her niece asked, “Aunt Carrie, I don't know why we did that. How could we do that?”

She described Pike as emotionally immature and easily influenced at 18. “She’s not the monster she’s been portrayed to be,” Ross said. “She is a sweet, kind, giving, loving person. She has grown up and matured to the point where all she wants to do is help people.”

But that description conflicts with the evidence presented at trial.

Prosecutors said Pike planned the attack because she believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend and later showed other students a piece of Slemmer’s skull.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has also questioned Pike’s remorse, saying she had never received an apology from Pike or her family in 31 years.

“If a person's very remorseful because she knows she's going to get the death penalty and they're going to act on it, then why didn't she show her remorse years ago?” Martinez said.

Pike did not apologize in her final statement before the failed execution. Ross said her niece had apologized repeatedly and could not undo what happened. “She can't take it back. She can't make this whole problem go away. If she could, she would,” Ross said.

According to Ross, the family is now left dealing with an outcome they never expected. “I understand how May feels. I'm not blind to that. But we hurt, too,” she said. “With all the back and forth they have done to her, can they not just stop?”