Steven Hale on nearly 50 minutes in the dark at Christa Pike's execution
The Nashville Banner reporter, one of seven media witnesses, tells Criminally Obsessed's Anne Emerson what he saw and heard before the curtain closed and after.
Criminally ObsessedStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 119,950 views a day, 14 times a normal first day on this channel (8,584).
What Really Happened in Christa Pike's Execution Room? Media Witness Breaks It Down
Steven Hale had sat in a Tennessee execution witness room four times before September 30. He tells Criminally Obsessed that nothing prepared him for the fifth. His interview with the channel's investigative reporter Anne Emerson passed 48,000 views in its first seven hours. A new video here usually ends its whole first day with fewer than 9,000.
Hale writes for the Nashville Banner and is the author of Death Row Welcomes You. He was one of seven media witnesses when the state set out to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. The description sets out what he describes: after the first dose of pentobarbital, Pike was still audibly alive, talking and moving, and asked prison officials whether this was how it was supposed to go.
Then staff closed the curtain on the witnesses while Pike could still be heard breathing. Hale recounts close to 50 minutes in near darkness, writing notes he could not see as doors opened and closed and Pike's spiritual advisor and attorney moved in and out. He was escorted out of the prison still believing she was alive. As the press conference began, he watched an ambulance arrive with its sirens on. A shorter explainer the channel posted the same day says Pike remains unconscious on a ventilator in a Nashville hospital while Tennessee investigates.
The comment section already holds more than a usual full first day brings. Much of it is about procedure: how much training the IV team receives, a needle some viewers say came out bent, and whether the state was hurrying to finish before midnight. Several commenters who say they work in medicine suggest that the breathing Hale heard may have been agonal respirations rather than snoring.
It was a heavy Monday on the channel. It also covered the sentencing of Caleb Flynn, the former American Idol contestant convicted of murdering his wife, Ashley. A clip of Flynn denying the killing in court drew almost exactly as many views as the Hale interview. The live stream of the hearing and a preview episode both opened at several times the channel's usual pace.
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- Channel
- Criminally Obsessed
- Subscribers
- 236,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 269,008 (on a normal day: 1,010,029)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 48,269 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 119,950
The numbers
Four videos from the same Monday all opened well ahead of what a new upload usually draws here, and the Hale interview leads them.
