They Saved Christa Pike's Life — So The State Can Try To Kill Her Again

Chyyy... pour something first, Glowgetters, because this update needs a clear head.

On October 3rd I wrote about the night Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike and FAILED — the two rounds of pentobarbital, her arm feeling like it was "about to burst open," the snoring behind the curtain. Now we know WHY it failed — and what the state did next is the dumbest part of this entire story.

THE UPDATE. Per her legal team, via NBC Los Angeles, the Associated Press and CBS News: the execution team never got the IV lines right. Medical experts say the pentobarbital pooled in her arm tissue instead of entering her bloodstream — hence the swelling, the burning, the blistering. Pike spent SIX DAYS unconscious on a ventilator. As of today she's awake, speaking, even walking around her hospital room — but she's mentally foggy, she has pneumonia, a blood clot in her arm, trouble swallowing, and NO function in her arms and hands.

READ THAT BACK. SLOWLY. The State of Tennessee — its doctors, its hospital, its entire medical apparatus — spent six days keeping this woman ALIVE. Intubated her. Sat with her. Walked her around the room.

So the state can drag her back to that chamber and kill her again later.

Make it make sense. The plan for this woman is: kill her, and when that doesn't work, heal her, then KILL HER AGAIN. That's not a justice system — that's cruelty with a budget.

MORGAN'S TAKE: "This is why the death penalty is outdated. To save someone you tried to kill just to kill them again is simply dumb as hell."

AND THE MACHINE KNOWS IT. Gov. Bill Lee has halted every execution in Tennessee for the rest of 2026 and ordered an independent review. The prisons commissioner, Frank Strada, is STEPPING DOWN. And on October 7, a judge ordered the state to preserve every needle, IV line, syringe, medical log and email from that chamber. Pike's lawyers are pushing for her sentence to be commuted to life. The state hasn't said whether it will attempt a second execution — but the governor's own pause says everything the state won't.

And to be clear, because I will not let this get twisted: Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old. Court records say Pike participated in her torture-murder in 1995 and Pike was convicted of it. Pike deserves to die of old age in a prison cell, missing every sunrise she took from Colleen. But the state proved last week it can't even be trusted to carry out the thing it keeps defending — and when it had to choose between cleaning up its mess or doubling down, it booked her a hospital room and a second appointment with the needle.

We're watching.

Glowgetters, the group chat is OPEN at the bottom of this page: team life-in-prison, team "the system can't be fixed," or team "I'm not ready to talk about this one"? Come argue with me.

— Morgan ✨