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Tennessee: Don’t Shoot Christa Pike or Anyone Else

Tennessee: Don’t Shoot Christa Pike or Anyone Else

Last updated on: October 21, 2026 at 1:26 pm by Jeff Hood

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Tennessee: Don’t Shoot Christa Pike or Anyone Else 2026-10-21T13:26:56-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Don't Shoot Christa Pike

Don’t Shoot Christa Pike

Tennessee: Don’t Shoot Christa Pike or Anyone Else

Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike. It could not. On the night of September 30, someone inside Riverbend called 911. The transcript reads: “We’ve administered 10 grams of pentobarbital. The person is not yet deceased.” Ten grams is two full doses under state protocol. Nearly an hour had passed. Pike was still breathing. She was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Of course, she is still alive.

Four months earlier, the Tennessee Department of Correction spent more than an hour hunting for a vein in Tony Carruthers. Now that Gov. Bill Lee has paused the one execution left in 2026, lawmakers are quickly reaching for the rifle.

On CNN, House Speaker Cameron Sexton said that he would not close the books on any method. In addition, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson declared his desire for something, “far more reliable and predictable.” Previously, in 2023, Rep. Dennis Powers pushed HB 1245 through committee, calling the firing squad the most humane way to execute someone. The Department of Correction had answered him a year before. Asked whether it could run a firing squad, it said it “does not know where it would begin” on safety during such an execution. That was Tennessee’s own executioners talking.

Nationally, I have been in the chamber for fourteen different executions in five states. No spiritual advisor has stood in more. I was there when Alabama used nitrogen on Kenneth Smith, the first time any state had tried it. I have watched methods sold as peaceful produce what no honest witness could ever call peaceful.

Since 1976, six men have been executed by firing squad in our country. Three in Utah across thirty-three years. Three in South Carolina inside eight months of 2025. That is the entire record Tennessee’s leaders are calling reliable. The rifle sells itself on four promises: certainty, humanity, honesty and free choice. The reality is anything but.

Certainty? A bullet cannot miss the way a vein can. Mikal Mahdi’s autopsy says otherwise. South Carolina shot him on April 11, 2025. Three volunteers with live rounds. A paper target over his heart. His body showed two wounds. The rounds struck low. Only one chamber of his heart was damaged. A pathologist retained by his lawyers concluded he stayed conscious for up to a minute while he bled out. Tennessee cannot find a vein. It has no business promising it can find a heart.

Humanity? Fast is supposed to mean painless. A rifle round to the chest does not switch a person off. A heart that is nicked keeps pumping. The lungs fill. The person is awake for it. I have heard last breaths through a stethoscope held to a microphone. I know what prolonged consciousness looks like when the state insists the method is clean. The shock of the gunshots hides any awareness of suffering that witnesses might have.

Honesty? At least the rifle does not pretend to be medicine, its defenders say. The method was built to keep you from seeing. The hood covers the face. The paper target covers the heart. The shooter aims at a shape. In 2023, Powers told the committee one shooter would fire a blank so that no one would know who fired the fatal shot. The prisoner is made faceless. The shooters are made anonymous. Obscurity and transparency are not the same thing.

Free choice? HB 1245 would have let the condemned sign a waiver for the rifle. Before September 30, Christa Pike asked for an all-female execution team. In August, her lawyers offered a Knox County judge hanging as the alternative to the needle. Nobody picks the bullet because they want a bullet. The state writes the menu. The condemned picks the horror they fear the least. Handing Pike a waiver for a rifle is the state asking the woman it failed to kill to sign off on the next horrific attempt.

None of this forgets Colleen Slemmer. The asphalt. The piece of skull. The pentagram. It simply asks state officials not rush into another mistake.

There is no such thing as a clean kill. Tennessee would do well to listen. Can you imagine what a botched firing squad execution would look like?

Don’t Shoot Christa Pike!

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a spiritual advisor who has accompanied fourteen people to their executions. He is the founder of the Execution Intervention Project and the author of The Lie of the Clean Kill: Idaho, the Firing Squad, and the Allure of the Bullet.

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About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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October 20, 2026

South Carolina Brought the Firing Squad Back. Now, Stop It.

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