Christa Pike is walking again. A week later, Texas used the same drug on a man

"She is up and walking for the first time today."

Those words came from Christa Pike's lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, speaking to the BBC on Thursday 8 October. So "today" was 8 October. Eight days earlier, Tennessee had pumped two lethal doses of pentobarbital into her arm.

She was meant to die on that gurney. Instead she is shuffling around a hospital room in Nashville.

Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee's death row. On 30 September she survived her own execution while witnesses listened to her snore behind a curtain. She was sent to death row for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer.

Now the state has a question it never planned for. What do you do with a prisoner who will not die?

How is Christa Pike doing now?

Better than anyone expected. Her lawyers say her health has seen a profound turnaround in just three days, the BBC reports.

Ferrell says the walking is short. "Just around the room, not very far," he told the BBC. Her arms are still badly hurt and she cannot use them much.

Her mind is coming back slowly. Ferrell says she is "fairly with it" but foggy, and she loses her train of thought easily and forgets where she is going. He had not seen her himself. He was passing on what colleagues told him.

It is a big jump from a few days earlier. On Monday night, 5 October, her team says doctors believed she was brain dead. By Tuesday morning she was awake.

Her first words were "Where am I and who are you?", her lawyers said. They described her as angry and confused.

On 7 October the news was still grim. Her attorneys said she had pneumonia and a blood clot in one arm. Both arms were badly swollen, and she could not swallow food. Attorney Randy Spivey said she had "a long road to recovery".

Ferrell thinks she will keep improving. He also says there could be some permanent damage, and nobody knows yet.

Photo: Rikki Mitterer / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What happened in Texas a week later?

While Pike lay in hospital, Texas got ready to use the same drug on someone else.

Jamaal Howard, 46, was due to die on 7 October in Huntsville. In 2000, when he was 20, he shot store clerk Vickie Swartout, 42, during a robbery in Silsbee. He took $114 and a carton of cigarettes. A security camera filmed the shooting.

His lawyers pointed straight at Tennessee. They argued Howard faced the same risks as Pike because both states use pentobarbital. They also questioned the quality of Texas's drugs and said Howard was intellectually disabled.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said no, without comment. Late that evening, the US Supreme Court refused to step in.

Howard apologised to Swartout's family in his last words. "I wish that you accept my apology and I wish for your forgiveness," he said.

Then the drug went in. According to AP, he gasped a couple of times, made snoring sounds and coughed. His movement stopped within about 30 seconds. He was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m.

His sister was among the witnesses. She broke down and shouted, "Get me out of here," and officers helped her out of the room.

Howard was the 30th person executed in the US this year and the first since Pike. He was Texas's seventh of 2026.

Did Texas use the same drug as Tennessee?

Yes. Both states follow almost the same plan, a law professor at the University of Richmond told FOX 26 Houston.

So the drug and the plan were the same, with the opposite result. Experts like Robin Maher of the Death Penalty Information Center think the difference was the needle. "It's likely that her veins were blown, or that the needle went through the vein," she told Al Jazeera.

Photo: Mark Britain from Houston, USA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Can Tennessee execute Christa Pike again?

Nobody in charge will say. Tennessee's attorney general told reporters he did not know whether the state would set a new date, the BBC reports.

For now the death chamber is quiet. Governor Bill Lee has paused all executions in the state and ordered an independent review of what went wrong. The prisons chief, Frank Strada, is resigning.

Not everyone wants mercy. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor, said: "Bring back the electric chair."

The victim's family has spoken too. Colleen Slemmer's mother called the failed execution a "mess".

The law offers little comfort to Pike. In 1947, Louisiana put Willie Francis back in the electric chair a year after it first failed to kill him, with the US Supreme Court's blessing.

What do Christa Pike's lawyers want?

Two things. They want her off death row, and they want answers.

Her team has asked Governor Lee to turn her sentence into life in prison without parole. They have asked before, and he said no.

A judge has already given them part of what they asked for. Judge I'Ashea Myles ordered the state to keep every piece of evidence from that night. That includes the IV lines, syringes, packaging, and audio and video recordings. She also asked for records of Pike's mental state.

That evidence could lead to a lawsuit against the state. Not yet, though. Federal public defender Luke Ihnen told the court that "a new lawsuit cannot be filed" while Pike could not give her consent.

"We are very much in uncharted waters," Ferrell told reporters.

Photo: Kaldari / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

How often do executions go wrong in the US?

Often enough to form a pattern. Since 2022, at least six states have botched a lethal injection, Al Jazeera reports: Tennessee, Idaho, Alabama, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma.

Tennessee has done it twice this year. In May, staff spent more than 90 minutes trying to set up a backup IV for Tony Carruthers before they called it off. In Idaho in 2024, Thomas Creech's execution was stopped after eight failed tries to find a vein in his arms, legs and feet.

A study of US executions from 1890 to 2010 found lethal injections went wrong more than twice as often as every other method. Yet it is still the main method in 28 of the 29 states with the death penalty.

39.00Lethal injection

5.00Gas

3.00Firing squad

See the numbers

Lethal injection	39.00
Gas	5.00
Firing squad	3.00

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, via Al Jazeera

The experts Al Jazeera spoke to give a few reasons. Big medical groups ban their members from helping with executions, so prisons often rely on staff without proper training. Some drugs come from compounding pharmacies, which face less checking. And many people on death row are older and sicker, with veins that are hard to find.

Law professor Corinna Barrett Lain has watched executions go wrong for hours. Lethal injection was always about "a humane-looking execution, not a humane execution," she told Al Jazeera.

Older methods are back in the debate too. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Fort Hood shooter will face a public firing squad.

Why is the whole world watching Christa Pike?

Because nobody has ever been here before. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, she is the only prisoner known to survive lethal doses of execution drugs.

Others walked away from failed executions because staff never got the needle in. Pike took two full doses. Doctors thought she was brain dead. Then she woke up and asked who everyone was.

A week later, Texas used the same drug on Jamaal Howard and he was dead within minutes. Tennessee has frozen its death chamber, and its top lawyer cannot say what comes next.

The woman the state tried to kill is now taking her first steps.