Tennessee freezes executions after Christa Pike survives lethal injection
What's next: The state supreme court controls any new execution date as Bill Lee orders an independent investigation.
Tennessee has halted executions for the rest of the year after death row inmate Christa Pike survived a lethal injection attempt and later returned to prison. Pike, sentenced to die for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, received two doses of pentobarbital after the first failed to kill her. Her lawyers had warned beforehand that thrombocytosis, a clotting condition, could disrupt the injection process. Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent investigation, and a judge has directed officials to preserve all evidence tied to the procedure. A lawyer for the state told a court hearing that the Tennessee Supreme Court would decide whether to set a new execution date.