Tennessee officials failed to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday after giving her two doses of pentobarbital, and Gov. Bill Lee halted the state’s remaining scheduled execution for the rest of 2026 pending a third-party review, NPR/AP and multi-outlet night desks reported into Thursday. Pike, 50, was alive and snoring after the attempt and was taken by ambulance from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, her attorneys said. Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher called the survival after the drugs were administered “singular and unparalleled.”

Earlier Wednesday the Sixth Circuit stayed the morning execution to weigh claims about childhood sexual abuse at sentencing; the U.S. Supreme Court later vacated that stay over a liberal dissent, clearing the path. Media witnesses described Pike speaking last words, then asking about her arm as the protocol continued; a second syringe set was used after the first did not end her life. The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed the attorney general–approved protocol. Defense lawyers filed emergency motions arguing cruel and unusual punishment.

Backstory: Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer when Pike was 18; she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. The state had already scrubbed another pentobarbital attempt in May when an IV could not be placed. Victim’s mother May Martinez had traveled to Nashville hoping to witness the sentence. Thursday’s politics card is about the failed execution, the Court path that allowed it, and Lee’s halt — not a new guilt finding. Watch the third-party review, federal docket motions, and whether other states pause single-drug protocols.