The government of Tennessee couldn't even kill a woman strapped to a gurney — and now she may never wake up. Christa Pike, 50, has remained unconscious and on a ventilator since Wednesday night when state officials pumped two doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital into her veins at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. The drugs didn't kill her. They left her arms burned and blistered, her brain possibly damaged, and the state's execution apparatus in freefall.

This is what institutional failure looks like: a system so broken it cannot perform its most final, irreversible function without making a catastrophe worse. Pike's lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, said Sunday that she is "critically ill" and that her prognosis may not be known for days. "If she recovers — she may not fully recover," Ferrell told CNN. "And there may be issues about her competence. We just don't know any of this."

Pike was convicted in 1996 for the torture and murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 at the time — one of the youngest women ever sent to death row. She has spent over 30 years in prison, most of it in solitary confinement. None of that is in dispute. What's in dispute is whether the state of Tennessee is competent to carry out the sentence it imposed.

This is the second time this year Tennessee has failed to execute a prisoner. In May, staff couldn't get a secondary IV line into Tony Carruthers and had to call it off. The state had execution problems in 2022 as well. A pattern is emerging, and it's not one of precision.

Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada announced his resignation Saturday. Gov. Bill Lee suspended all executions for the rest of the year and ordered an independent investigation by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton. Those are accountability moves, but they come after repeated failure — not before it.

Meanwhile, the state is keeping details under wraps. Tennessee, like many death penalty states, shields execution procedures, drug sourcing, and quality testing from public view. Ferrell called on Tennessee to "start telling its people exactly what it is doing so that in the democratic process, the people of Tennessee can decide if that's what they want to be done in their name." Pike's attorneys have asked a court to preserve all records, communications, images, and video from the execution. The state has offered no explanation for what went wrong.

Ferrell has not been allowed to see his client. He has been receiving updates through Pike's medical power of attorney. "She is guarded," he said. "I'm not sure who may have seen her."

Legal experts say the state may be boxed in. Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno told the New York Post that Pike cannot be executed if she is brain-injured and doesn't understand the proceedings — a principle the Supreme Court recognized in 2019. Ferrell has asked Gov. Lee to commute Pike's sentence to life in prison.

The NBC report noted that Pike's execution was delayed over eight hours Wednesday as the Supreme Court considered — then overturned — a federal appeals court ruling that would have halted the injection to review whether Pike's jury should have considered sexual abuse she suffered as a child. The high court let it proceed. The state then failed at the task it fought so hard to carry out.

A government that cannot reliably execute its own sentences — whether you support capital punishment or not — is a government that cannot perform its most basic functions. Tennessee has now botched multiple executions, hidden the details from the public, and left an inmate clinging to life with unknown brain damage. The question isn't whether Christa Pike deserves punishment. The question is whether the state is competent to deliver it.