Christa Pike Tried to Help Them Do WHAT?!

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today.

Tony Brueski (0:20)

Let's talk about the botched execution, shall we? If I don't botch saying the word botched execution first. And I'd love your thoughts in the comment section as we work through this fine, chaotic story seems that it might be a lesson in, you know, even the dirty jobs, the ones that we don't like, the ones that are really horrible, the ones that do require a level of precision, you can't phone in. You should probably pay attention to the red flags and the problems leading up to the said performance, if you will, of said execution.

And make sure that your T's are crossed and your I's are dotted and you're, you're pretty much going into it where it's, this should work. There shouldn't be, you know, a seven to 10% failure rate.

On September 30th, the state of Tennessee tried to execute Christina Pike by lethal injection. She received two full doses of Pento Barbarol, the drug that's supposed to stop your heart. Her heart didn't stop. According to an emergency court filing from her attorneys, the IV team stuck her with at least seven needles in one arm. One needle came out bent at a 90-degree angle. Again, this shouldn't be happening to anyone, period. Even if she's on death row, your needle is literally bending at a 90-degree. You might not be qualified to be giving the shot. Just saying. Her arms were swollen, burned and blistered. Witnesses in the room said they could hear her breathing and snoring loudly after the drugs went in. Her lawyers filed an emergency motion. The execution, well, I don't know if halted is the right word, but they eventually ran out of drugs. Pike's defense team says she actually tried to help officials find a vein. She cooperated with the people who were trying to end her life and they still couldn't do it.

Leave it to the government.

The doctor who oversaw this execution, this wasn't a one-off. He'd already botched another one four months earlier. He admitted under oath that he hadn't performed the critical backup procedure in over 13 years. The state was warned and the court blocked the evidence and lethal injection, the method the government adopted because it was supposed to be the clean, humane option, fails at a higher rate than every other method of execution this country has ever used. And like good Americans, we just keep doing it over and over and over expecting different results.

Pike was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student in a Knoxville Job Corps program. She's been on death row now for 30 years because it takes us 30 years to execute someone on death row. The execution on September 30th would have been Tennessee's first execution of a woman in over 200 years. They baked cakes. They had a big chicken party ready. There was going to be balloons and a clown and somebody making balloon animals and face paint.

SPEAKER_1 (4:21)

It was going to be a big deal.

Tony Brueski (4:22)

Okay, no, maybe not.

But it was the first one for Tennessee in over 200 years. You know, you think you have one job. This is a big deal. First time you might want to make sure you know to do it right. Just saying, just saying. The US. Supreme Court lifted a last minute stay just before 7 p.m., clearing it to proceed. Well, it didn't exactly proceed. It collapsed. The physician overseeing Pike's lethal injection was Dr. Mark Fowler, a 68-year-old family medicine doctor from Union City, Tennessee. He's a former ER physician. He holds no current hospital privileges, meaning no hospital in the country has authorized him to practice or perform procedures at its facility. Fowler was the same doctor who oversaw the attempted execution of Tony Carruthers on May 21st of 2026 In that case, you may remember, the IV team got the primary line in, but spent over an hour trying to establish the required backup line. They punctured Carruthers more than a dozen times. Fowler stepped in to attempt a central line. A procedure where a catheter goes deep into the major vein in the chest, neck or groin. He failed. A witness in the chamber, Carruthers' attorney described Fowler's hands shaking as he tried to insert the line into Carruthers' chest. Carruthers' family says he's been left partially paralyzed. Governor Bill Lee called off the execution and gave Carruthers a one-year reprieve.

You're doing good, Tennessee. You had one job. In an October 25 deposition, months before either execution attempt, Fowler testified under oath that he hadn't placed a central line in over 13 years. Not since around 2013, when he left ER work. He placed a dozen or more central lines in his entire career. With one of them ended with a guide wire in the patient's carotid vein, a complication. He told the court he had no hospital privileges. And he said he didn't even know the execution protocol required him to be able to place a central line until the prisoner's attorneys brought it to his attention. Oh, we need to do that.