The doctor involved in Christa Pike’s failed execution in Tennessee says the IV delivering the lethal drugs was misplaced, causing the medication to flow into the tissue in her arms rather than into her veins. He also acknowledged that the team should have stopped when Pike reported pain.
Dr. Mark Fowler, the physician at Pike’s Sept. 30 execution attempt, described what happened in an interview published Friday. Pike, 50, received two doses of pentobarbital but survived. She spent days in hospital before regaining consciousness.
Fowler said he became concerned when the execution took about 45 minutes. When he entered the chamber, Pike was still alive and gasping. At first, he thought the medication might simply be taking longer to work, so he waited.
After another half-hour, Fowler worried Pike might survive with permanent brain damage. He later assessed her as comatose, and a deputy commissioner ordered the execution halted. Fowler called for oxygen, and Pike was taken by ambulance to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Fowler said the IV had not been properly placed. “It was delivering medicine to the subcutaneous tissue” in Pike’s arms, he said.
Pike’s attorneys have said she complained of intense arm pain during the procedure, telling those present, “My arm feels like it’s about to burst open.” Fowler said the team should have stopped to reassess the situation. “They should have stopped and reassessed, and they didn’t,” he said.
In a statement released by her attorneys days later, Pike said she remains in constant pain and still has trouble speaking. “My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts,” she said. “I still struggle to speak.” She also said she was “deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.”
Fowler’s work on Pike’s execution has drawn attention alongside his involvement in other Tennessee cases. He was also involved in Byron Black’s 2025 execution and in the failed May execution of Tony Carruthers. In Carruthers’ case, Fowler tried to place an IV near his clavicle after paramedics could not establish standard IV access. Fowler said he stopped because he did not have enough anesthetic and the procedure was becoming too painful.
“I’m not an evil, vicious person. I’m not unscrupulous. I’m not uncaring, and I’m not incompetent,” Fowler said.
He nevertheless argued that Tennessee should revise its lethal-injection procedures. Fowler said there should be fewer handoffs between execution team members, and that those who place IV lines should stay nearby to monitor them as the drugs are administered.
“The people who place the IV lines should thereafter be observant about what’s happening with them as the medicine goes in,” he said.
After the failed execution, Gov. Bill Lee paused the state’s remaining executions for the year and ordered an independent review. Lee said Pike remains in prison under state law and suggested her sentence is unlikely to change. “I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before unless determined otherwise by the courts,” he said.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she met through a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville. Pike’s attorneys have asked Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole.
