Pope Leo XIV allegedly tried to halt Tennessee’s lethal injection of Satanic killer Christa Pike, and the botched execution left her alive in critical condition instead of dead.
Tennessee officials spent Wednesday night trying to execute Christa Gail Pike by lethal injection and failed. Her lawyers later said she was alive but in critical condition after at least two unsuccessful attempts and a rush to the hospital by ambulance.
The Daily Mail reported that Pope Leo XIV, the American pontiff, allegedly tried to intervene to stop the injections that same day, citing Italian paper La Repubblica. Authorities gave no response, according to that account. On Friday, the Vatican did not confirm the report when asked by dpa, the German press agency.
Pike, now 50 and on death row for 30 years, was the first woman Tennessee had scheduled for execution in more than two centuries. She was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
The execution was supposed to begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday. A federal appeals court stopped it about an hour before that time. Tennessee appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. After eight hours, the high court overruled the lower court and allowed the lethal injection to proceed.
Officials raised the curtains on the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m. Pike was strapped to the gurney. She delivered what were described as her last words: “I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is in love.”
What followed did not go as planned. Pike’s attorneys said she was injected with at least seven needles across two unsuccessful attempts using pentobarbital. After the first dose, they said, she remained awake, sang and blessed people in the spectators’ room, thanked the medical team, and offered to direct them to a vein near her shoulder. She raised her head and asked if her arm was supposed to feel that way. Her spiritual advisor was removed at points, her lawyers said.
Witnesses reported a second dose of pentobarbital by 8:26 p.m. Pike snored behind a closed curtain. The microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. Witnesses were escorted out. Attorneys said she was then taken by ambulance to a hospital. On Thursday, her lawyers announced she was alive but in critical condition. They offered no update on Friday.
On Thursday, the Bishops of Tennessee sent a letter to Gov. Bill Lee. They wrote that they “respectfully and urgently ask you to commute the death sentence of Christa Gail Pike and ensure that the State of Tennessee does not attempt to execute her again.”
“[We are] mindful of the horrific murder of Colleen Slemmer.”
They added that “accountability need not require another death.”
Lee received the request. No response from the governor appears in the available record of the episode.
Republican Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett took the opposite view. Speaking on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” he called for a method that does not fail.
Burchett said: “Prop her up and bring her to a firing squad.”
He went further: “The firing squad and hanging are 100 percent. I've never heard of them not being. Let's get to something that works and just do it.” He added, “Get away from the drugs. That’s been problematic from the start.” And: “I've also proposed legislation for hanging. That’s what we got to look at. These things are not successful.”
The crime behind the sentence is not in dispute in the reporting. In 1995, 18-year-old Christa Pike and her boyfriend stabbed and beat 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a Knoxville Job Corps classmate, on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus. Investigators said a pentagram was carved into Slemmer’s chest. Pike took a piece of the skull as a souvenir. She was sentenced to death the next year.
Thirty years later, Tennessee tried to carry out that sentence with lethal injection and could not finish the job on Wednesday night. A papal intervention attempt was reported and left unconfirmed by the Vatican. State bishops urged commutation. A Tennessee congressman demanded a method that actually works.
Justice delayed for three decades is bad enough. Justice that starts, stalls, and leaves a condemned murderer in a hospital bed is a failure the state owes the victim’s memory to correct, with a lawful method that does what the sentence requires.
