Hospital staff are treating death row inmate Christa Pike for potential brain damage after officials were unable to carry out her death sentence on Wednesday, according to her legal team. Pike, 50, remained conscious and was observed snoring for more than 40 minutes after prison staff administered two doses of pentobarbital. In response to the failure, Governor Bill Lee has ordered a third party review of the process and suspended all other executions in Tennessee for the remainder of 2026.

The attempted execution followed a Sept. 30 US Supreme Court decision to vacate a lower court stay, a move Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a 19 year old classmate and was scheduled to be the first woman executed by the state in over 200 years. Her attorneys have since filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court to halt any further attempts, citing the unnecessary agony caused by the failed procedure.