Tennessee has called off another planned execution in 2026 and will review how it puts prisoners to death after an inmate, Christa Pike, survived two doses of a lethal drug in the state’s second botched attempt at capital punishment this year.
It is the second time in five years that Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has paused executions because of questions over the effectiveness of the state’s lethal injections. In 2022, he ordered a review after prison officials failed to properly test the drugs before an execution.
Mr. Lee, speaking to reporters on Thursday, called the bungled execution a “tragedy” and said “it shouldn’t have happened.” He also confirmed that there would not be another attempt to execute Ms. Pike before year-end.
“It’s deeply disturbing to me that that has happened in this state — the people deserve better than that,” Mr. Lee said.
Mr. Lee also ordered a third-party review of the execution attempt, during which Ms. Pike remained alive, breathing and snoring for nearly an hour before she was taken to a hospital.
Mr. Lee, who is term-limited, is in the final months of his term. He said he had not yet decided who would conduct the independent review.
The remaining execution for this year, for a man convicted of murdering a friend, had been scheduled for December. This year, Mr. Lee issued a reprieve for Tony Carruthers, another death-row inmate whose execution was canceled after medical staff members failed to find a vein.
Out of four planned executions this year in Tennessee, only one took place without incident.
Ms. Pike, 50, was hospitalized Wednesday evening after it was clear she was still conscious after two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital. It was not immediately clear Thursday morning what her condition was, or what had gone wrong.
Ms. Pike, convicted of the 1995 murder of a classmate, had been on death row for more than three decades. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Her lawyers had raised concerns about whether the procedure could be carried out, given the failure to execute Mr. Carruthers this year. They also warned that Ms. Pike’s pain could be exacerbated by her history of sexual trauma, along with other medical issues.
“The people of Tennessee have determined that the death penalty is the appropriate penalty for the most heinous crimes in the state,” Mr. Lee said. “The people of Tennessee make that decision, and my job is to make sure then that those sentences are carried out.”
The Wednesday execution was already delayed after a flurry of last-minute legal challenges. But after the Supreme Court cleared the way, Tennessee officials moved ahead.
Only a few people were allowed to witness the attempt to end Ms. Pike’s life. While the curtains separating the witness space from the execution chamber were drawn for much of the time, reporters said they could hear Ms. Pike breathing and snoring for nearly an hour.
At one point, they said, she described a burning pain in her arm.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement it “had followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office.”
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective,” the department said.
Mr. Lee on Thursday did not directly answer a question about whether prison agency leaders should be removed. But he repeated that there was no cause to doubt that the department had followed the protocol correctly.
“There was no reason to expect it to not work, but it didn’t,” he said. “But something didn’t go well or right last night, and we need to find out why.”
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