EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Tennessee halts all state executions following a botched lethal injection, temporarily sparing double murderer Gary Wayne Sutton from his death date.
The execution of a double murderer who bailed one of his victims out of jail only for the man to be shot dead — and then killed his sister when she went looking for him — has been put on hold after Tennessee's botched attempt to lethally inject Christa Pike for her role in the "satanic" torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995.
Gov. Bill Lee halted the death penalty across the state for the rest of the year — but there was only one scheduled, the Dec. 3 execution of convicted double murderer Gary Wayne Sutton.