A judge orders Tennessee to keep every needle and 911 call from the Pike execution. Texas proceeds Wednesday night (Oct. 7) with the same drug
Davidson County Chancellor I'Ashea Myles on Wednesday granted an emergency motion from Christa Pike's lawyers and ordered the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve 'any and all evidence' from the Sept. 30 execution attempt: needles, drug lot numbers, gurney restraints, 911 recordings and communications among state officials. The state's lawyer said it was already preserving everything; the judge said the order should therefore be no burden, and that the court would write its own. Pike, convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, survived two doses of pentobarbital after a federal appeals court's last-minute stay was lifted by the Supreme Court. She spent six days unconscious on a ventilator; her lawyers had believed she was brain-dead before she woke 'to the shock of everyone' and asked where she was. Attorney Randy Spivey described pneumonia, a blood clot in one arm, inability to swallow and no function in her arms. Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions and ordered a third-party investigation; the department says it followed protocol. In Texas, Jamaal Howard, 46, convicted in the 2000 shooting of convenience-store clerk Vickie Swartout, was scheduled to receive pentobarbital at 6 p.m. in Huntsville, the first U.S. execution since the failure and the 30th this year. His fate was not known at press time.
No American has survived a lethal injection and lived to litigate it in the modern era. Every question that follows, whether a second attempt is cruel and unusual, whether the drug or the protocol failed, who knew what on the night, depends on evidence that could have vanished. Today's order is the first step in building that record. And the same drug, from the same opaque supply chain, is being used in Texas within hours, which is why the two stories are one.
Twenty-seven states still have the death penalty. The constitutional precedent at stake, whether a state may try twice, dates to 1947. If Tennessee seeks a second date, this is the case that would bring it back to the Supreme Court.
The state followed its protocol and a court-approved drug; a medical anomaly does not make the sentence unlawful. Delaying every execution in the country over one failure would be a victory for process over justice.
A woman was given two lethal doses and lived, and the state will not say what it has. If the government cannot explain what happened on its own gurney, it has no business strapping anyone else to one.
Watch two documents: the written order Chancellor Myles said she would draft, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's statement Wednesday night on Howard. If Texas's pentobarbital works as designed, Tennessee's problem looks like Tennessee's. If anything is irregular, the drug itself goes on trial nationwide.
DailyDrop U.S. No. 3 · October 7, 2026