The failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee last month has thrust the death penalty, and the various flawed methods of enacting it, into the national spotlight.
The number of people killed by the state has increased every year since 2022, when 11 executions were conducted, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2025, 47 people received capital punishment. So far this year, there have been 31 executions concentrated in just six states: Florida, Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
With the rise of lethal injections in recent years, botched executions have drawn more attention. In 2022, Alabama failed to kill Alan Eugene Miller after executioners repeatedly punctured his veins with needles. Just two months later, Alabama failed again, this time with Kenneth Eugene Smith; he was killed two years later with nitrogen gas. In 2024, “vein access issues” stymied Idaho’s planned execution of Thomas Creech. And this year, Tennessee has botched not one but two killings. Before Pike, the state failed to kill Tony Carruthers.
After Pike survived, Tennessee paused all scheduled executions for this year. But the U.S. is approaching a new milestone in its history of capital punishment. The Pentagon announced tentative plans to livestream the Dec. 3 execution-by-firing squad of Nidal Hasan, who fatally shot 13 unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood.
After the news about Pike broke, Prison Journalism Project editors reached out to contributors and asked for their thoughts and stories about capital punishment.
Trevor Reese, from Louisiana, argued that the death penalty is arbitrary. Cesar Hernandez remembered how strange it was to be served uncharacteristically good food on execution day in his Texas prison. Lucretia Stone, from New Jersey, questioned whether we humans should be the ones to decide when someone lives or dies.
At least two writers, both from Tennessee, attempted to send dispatches over an e-communications platform. Both said their writings were censored. One of them was able to call an editor and dictate his reflections over the phone. The second writer said she would send her work via postal mail. PJP did not receive it by publication time, but will update this story if it arrives.
— PJP Editors
‘Don’t Be Too to Eager to Deal Out Death in Judgment’
When I was incarcerated at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where Christa Pike’s failed execution occurred, I met a man on death row who was receiving medical care to keep him alive until the state could execute him.
During a stint in prison in the 1990s, I befriended a former condemned prisoner who, after his sentence was changed to life, became an accomplished artist.
And I also knew and spoke with Kirk Bloodsworth, who was sentenced to death in 1985 and then exonerated a decade later.
Pike committed a horrendous crime when she murdered, along with two accomplices, Colleen Slemmer in 1995. What the state of Tennessee has subjected Pike to — two failed execution attempts that left her with severe injuries — is also horrendous.
Some people who commit heinous crimes may deserve to die. But to quote J.R.R. Tolkien: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
— Alex Friedmann, writing from Tennessee
The Death Penalty Is Arbitrary
After I was arrested for murder at age 16, detectives searched my bedroom. They confiscated all my pocket knives, of which I had an excessive amount, and a five-page research paper I had written for 10th grade English. The paper was on capital punishment in America. I took the position that the death penalty was racially biased and fundamentally arbitrary. The detectives seemed to feel the knives and the opinions expressed in the paper were equal evidence of my depravity.
Sixteen years later, having spent half my life incarcerated and five of those incarcerated years housed in the same building with Louisiana’s death row, I still think the death penalty is racially biased and fundamentally arbitrary.
Two people were convicted of the murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Only one of them, Christa Pike, was sentenced to death. Pike had to survive two lethal doses of pentobarbital, not because she was more responsible for the crime than her co-defendant and not because her actions were more heinous than the actions of her co-defendant, but because she was 18 and he was 17.
Guilt and culpability should determine a person’s fate in a court of law. Not their birthday. Otherwise we might as well sentence people according to their astrological sign. Pisces get life, Leos go free, Libras get the needle.
Like Pike, I am guilty of an atrocious crime. I killed an 8-year-old boy for no reason. My crime was heinous, inexcusable and completely my fault. Yet no one tried to kill me for it.
As I write, I am serving a life sentence. Why? Not because the boy’s death was less tragic than Slemmer’s. Not because he deserved less justice than Slemmer. Merely because I was 16.
— Trevor Reese, writing from Louisiana
We Should Not Make the Call About Who Lives and Dies
Execution is legalized murder. It’s a performance and an act of vengeance that does not give real justice to the families or communities harmed. Before Christa Pike, I recall hearing about other cases of failed executions, and that prison officials were questioning the effectiveness of phenobarbital then. I heard of electric chair executions that failed too. Add those unconscionable mishaps to the cases of men and women who were executed before DNA testing, and were later proven innocent.
All of that further confirms for me what I hope more people will start to believe: It is not up to people to determine whether a person lives or dies; that call has always been God’s to make. At least seven needles and two insufficient doses of phenobarbital demonstrated that Christa Pike’s time is not yet up.
— Lucretia Stone, writing from New Jersey
Good Food on Execution Day
Prior to prison, I didn’t really think about the death penalty. I was only vaguely aware that Texas routinely executed people. Then I was housed inside the death row building at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit north of Houston from July 2016 to January 2022.
The first time I saw a death row prisoner, I was perplexed at how normal he seemed. All the guards seemed to be terrified of those guys. They made it seem like the men on death row were sabertooth tigers.
On death row, the lights were always on in the cells. Shaving razors were prohibited, and medications were dissolved in water.
I still vividly recall an execution day, some years ago, when we were served fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, a brownie, and a super-potent fruit punch. I remember my neighbor turned to the guard passing out the trays and asked, “So does it take a person getting killed for us to be fed good?” The guard laughed. “Pretty much,” he said.
The 40-year-old man set to be executed that day had been on death row for 20 years. It was said that he did not have a single prison disciplinary case in his file. At 12:30 p.m., on that execution day, I looked out my window and watched the caravan take him to Huntsville Unit, the prison where they perform executions in what people call “the death house.”
From March 2023 to September 2024, I was housed at Huntsville. I knew where the death house was but never glimpsed it. On execution day, our recreation yard was used as a parking lot, so everybody had to be on the wings by 2:30 p.m. No one was allowed to walk around. (Last year, I wrote about one of those disturbing days for Prison Journalism Project.)
A few years ago, I heard about an NPR investigation that examined over 300 executions. The experts determined that 84% of these people experienced pulmonary edema in their lungs when they were killed. This basically meant that they felt the sensation of drowning as they died. I now see the death penalty as torture. The money that is wasted on the death penalty process should be redirected into initiatives to better people’s lives so they don’t turn to crime in the first place.
— Cesar Hernandez, writing from Texas
When Will Her Life End?
For now, Christa Pike is barely alive.
When my wife told me, over the phone, about her botched execution, I felt a sense of looming dread. Stories like these remind us how little control we incarcerated people have over our lives.
In the aftermath of this horrific failure, Tennessee has paused all executions until the end of the year. It is difficult to tell whether this is a responsible reaction to apparent malpractice or a savvy response to unfavorable political headwinds.
Pike’s attorneys said she awoke “angry” and confused six days after Tennessee failed to kill her. As she regains consciousness and discovers that her death-that-wasn’t has reignited a national debate about the morality of capital punishment, she must be wondering, and I am wondering too: Does her life end when the conversation stops? We hardly ever talk for long.
— Jeshua Noel, writing from Missouri
Who Should Pull the Trigger?
I’m curious to know how Tennessee obtained the pentobarbital it injected into Christa Pike. Corrections departments have struggled to procure execution chemicals for years, with most drug manufacturers refusing the sale on moral grounds, and some out of fear of public backlash. In fact, the supply problem is so fraught that states have passed secrecy laws to improve their ability to procure the drugs.
In Idaho, where I’m currently incarcerated, two former, high-ranking corrections officials reportedly scored the lethal materials used for the 2012 execution of Richard Leavitt with a suitcase full of cash in a Walmart parking lot in Tacoma, Washington. The exchange involved a pharmacist whose license was later put on probation for repeated inspection violations.
If it’s anything like here, Tennessee will fight tooth and nail to keep their supplier and testing methods secret, and then attempt to avoid future controversy by making the firing squad its primary method of execution, as Idaho has done.
Two years ago, I joined a peer-led initiative to overhaul what it means to serve time in Idaho prisons. Corrections staff and residents locked arms to change the violent, unhealthy culture that once plagued our facilities. We rely on our ability to create psychological safety, practice inclusion and inspire hope.
But following the failed 2024 execution of Thomas Creech, Idaho legislators successfully voted to prioritize the firing squad during executions. As the state prepares to shoot our most wayward to death, I feel a gaping wound opening in our collective conscience — threatening the improvements we’ve made to the corrections culture here. I think the lawmakers and prosecutors who pursue the death penalty should be the ones to pull the trigger.
— Patrick Irving, writing from Idaho
Death Is Final — Except in Tennessee
Horror: That was my initial reaction to Tennessee failing to execute Christa Pike.
Pike was 18 when she committed this crime and has spent 30 years on death row. Hours before her scheduled execution, a federal appeals court paused it to consider new evidence: Tennessee had conceded that Pike was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape, and that she had untreated bipolar disorder and PTSD at the time of the crime.
The Supreme Court lifted that pause without explanation. In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “I see no reason to shortcircuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision.”
Why the hurry? After 30 years, what was another week?
Death is supposed to be final — except, it seems, in the Tennessee Department of Correction. Pike should not have to endure another execution test run.
— Erin Kuhn-Brown, writing from Nevada
Worthy of Living
The state of Tennessee and the larger United States of America are hypocritical. With the botched killing of Christa Pike, Tennessee inflicted catastrophic harm while claiming to administer a humane punishment. Their attempt to murder Christa Pike failed. For days afterward, she lived on life support. The system believed her crime worthy of death, but since they botched her murder, I believe she’s worthy of life.
— Kory McClary, writing from New Jersey
This article first appeared on Prison Journalism Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.