The doctor who oversaw Christa Pike‘s failed execution revealed he still wants to put her to death one month after the convicted killer survived two lethal injections.
Physician Dr. Mark Fowler, who was assigned to pronounce Pike, 50, dead during her execution attempt on September 30, shared what went wrong in a new interview with Intelligencer.
Fowler, 69, explained that he was summoned from a waiting room after Pike received two doses of pentobarbital and gasped for air. “She’s not dead,” he recalled the warden saying.
“I thought, ‘Well, in human beings there’s a spectrum of responses to medications and we’ll give it a few more minutes,’” he continued.
When Pike didn’t die, he said he worried that she would have irreversible brain damage. Fowler reentered the execution chamber and diagnosed her as comatose.
Once the deputy commissioner ordered the execution to be halted, Fowler had to arrange emergency medical care in a desperate attempt to save Pike’s life.
It was ultimately determined that the execution team did not properly place the intravenous lines, which caused the lethal doses of pentobarbital to enter subcutaneous tissue of Pike’s arms instead of circulating into her bloodstream.
Following the failed execution, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the remainder of 2026.
Pike survived the execution attempt, and the current status of her case is unknown. However, Fowler said he is hopeful the state will follow through on Pike’s execution.
Part of his reasoning was that he believes there should be “a sense of justice” for her victim Colleen Slemmer’s mother. (Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 following the 1995 murder of her former classmate, who was 19 at the time).
“People will say, ‘Why don’t you just walk away from this?’ And the answer is, that’s exactly what the advocates against the death penalty want,” Fowler said in response to backlash over the botched execution. “They felt that if they could humiliate me I would step back from it — because I promise you, there ain’t anybody else in Tennessee going to sign up for it now — and the answer is, I cannot be pushed off a course that I find correct. I refuse to compromise.”
Fowler went on to defend his beliefs and insisted he’s “not an evil, vicious person” for feeling that way. “I’m not unscrupulous. I’m not uncaring, and I’m not incompetent,” he added.
The doctor also offered a solution for how failed executions can be avoided in the future. He said that the lethal-injection protocol needs to change, and that he prefers the older three-drug cocktail that involves potassium chloride over pentobarbital.
On Friday, October 30, Pike issued her first statement following the botched execution. She said she was in constant pain and was isolated in the prison’s medical ward.
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak,” she said.
Pike added that the physical pain has also had a large impact on her emotional and mental health.
“I had not contemplated life beyond that night,” she said. “I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.” She said she was also thinking about her victim’s family and “the terrible pain and loss they have endured.”
