The physician who participated in Tennessee's unsuccessful attempt to execute Christa Pike said an incorrectly inserted IV delivered pentobarbital into her arm tissue instead of her bloodstream. In an interview published Friday by New York Magazine, Dr. Mark Fowler said the team should have paused the procedure and reassessed after Pike reported pain.
Pike, 50, survived the Sept. 30 execution attempt despite receiving two doses of the drug. She spent days in the hospital before regaining consciousness. Fowler said he recognized a problem when the execution had continued for roughly 45 minutes. Summoned to the chamber, he found Pike alive and struggling to breathe.
Fowler initially considered whether the medication was taking longer than anticipated to work and chose to wait. After approximately another 30 minutes, he feared Pike might survive with permanent brain damage. He subsequently determined that she was comatose, and a deputy commissioner directed that the execution be halted. Fowler ordered oxygen before an ambulance transported Pike to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
According to an earlier court filing by Pike's lawyers, she complained of intense arm pain during the procedure and said her arm felt as though it would burst. In a statement her attorneys released Friday, Pike said she continued to experience constant pain in her body, arms, hands and throat, along with difficulty speaking. She also expressed distress over what she described as incompetence that had placed many people in a terrible situation.
New York Magazine reported that Fowler had also participated in Byron Black's execution in 2025 and the failed attempt to execute Tony Carruthers in May. In Carruthers' case, paramedics could not establish conventional IV access, prompting Fowler to try placing a line near his clavicle. Fowler said he abandoned that effort because he did not have sufficient anesthetic and the procedure was causing Carruthers too much pain.
While defending his competence and concern for those involved, Fowler said Tennessee needed to revise its lethal-injection protocol. He advocated reducing transfers of responsibility between team members and keeping the people who insert IV lines in place to watch them while the drugs are delivered.
After the attempt to execute Pike failed, Gov. Bill Lee suspended Tennessee's other executions scheduled for the year and commissioned an independent review. Lee said last week that Pike remained imprisoned under state law and indicated that he expected her death sentence to remain in effect unless the courts decided otherwise.
Pike received a death sentence for killing Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995. Both were participants in a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville. Pike's attorneys have asked Lee to commute her sentence to life imprisonment without parole. Fox News Digital said Fowler and the Tennessee Department of Correction had not responded to its requests for additional comment and an interview.
