STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The woman the State of Tennessee tried to execute on Wednesday is still alive and in critical condition.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Christa Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer when they were both teenagers. She had received a death sentence. Pike was given two full doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, and is now getting, quote-unquote, "lifesaving care" at a hospital, according to her lawyers.
INSKEEP: From WPLN in Nashville, Marianna Bacallao is covering this story. Good morning.
MARIANNA BACALLAO, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What went wrong on Wednesday?
BACALLAO: There's still a lot we don't know, but Christa Pike was given two rounds of pentobarbital. Usually, just one is considered a lethal dose. Her lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, says that she has problems with blood draws, and that's something they had brought up ahead of time in court.
STEPHEN FERRELL: Her blood draws were difficult. She has a blood disorder that contributes to that, and we knew this was coming. So back in January, we asked that this problem be addressed in a way that would not lead to the torture that happened last night.
BACALLAO: Her attorneys are now calling on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence because they call it cruel and unusual punishment. All the governor has done so far is pause executions and call for an independent review of the state's lethal injection protocols.
INSKEEP: I wonder why he would call for that now, given that this is not the first time it's happened. The state had another failed execution earlier this year.
BACALLAO: Right. Reporters directly asked Lee that question, and he did not directly answer that question. He mainly just talked about how important it was to do a review now. He does acknowledge the state has a death penalty and that it's his responsibility to carry it out. But about Pike's failed execution, he said this.
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BILL LEE: It's a tragedy, and it's deeply disturbing to me that that has happened in this state. The people deserve better than that.
BACALLAO: In that other failed execution back in May, medical staff could not access the veins of a man named Tony Carruthers. And the governor halted that execution. So there's a sense that one is a fluke, but two is a pattern. And speaking of patterns, this is also the second time Governor Lee has paused executions to do an extensive review of the process. He did so from 2022 to 2025. They found that the drugs used in the state's executions had not been properly inspected. The current process is the result of that review. Lee says the Department of Corrections followed this new process, and they don't know what went wrong.
INSKEEP: This has all happened during election season, and there's a governor's race in Tennessee. I understand this has become a topic in the governor's race.
BACALLAO: Right. So Lee is term limited. His moratorium is really only good for the next few months he's in office, and it will be up to the state's next governor to determine what to do with the review's findings. U.S. Senator Marshall Blackburn, the frontrunner to replace him, says she supports the review, but she's also calling for the state to bring back the electric chair. It's still an option here for those who were sentenced before the year 2000, like Christa Pike. Her Democratic opponent, Jerri Green, says she would extend the moratorium and just have death row inmates serve out a life sentence. Governor Lee says even if he won't be governor, the review should take as long as it needs to take to make sure something like what happened to Christa Pike doesn't happen again.
INSKEEP: Marianna Bacallao with WPLN in Nashville, thanks so much.
BACALLAO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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