In 1995, 18-year-old Christa Pike committed the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a crime that would put Pike on Tennessee’s death row for three decades. On September 30, 2026, the state attempted to carry out her sentence using lethal injection. Two doses of pentobarbital later, Pike was still alive, ultimately leaving the prison in an ambulance rather than a hearse.

But Christa Pike is far from the first condemned prisoner whose execution did not go according to plan. In this episode, twe examine Pike’s case alongside some of the most infamous failed and botched executions in American history, and ask the very medical-mystery question of how someone survives a procedure specifically designed to kill them. We’re talking failed IV access, lethal injection pharmacology, malfunctioning electric chairs, execution protocols, and the uncomfortable physiology behind what happens when an execution goes wrong.