By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-10-06 22:31:59 | Updated at 2026-10-07 01:59:58
5 hours ago
Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike’s botched lethal injection has reportedly spared a convicted double murderer from being executed.
Gary Wayne Sutton — who bailed his friend out of jail 34 years ago only to shoot him dead, and then killed the man’s sister — has been granted several more weeks to live as a result of Pike’s botched execution, according to a report by New York Post.
Last week, after Pike remained alive despite being injected with two rounds of lethal drugs, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) paused all remaining executions scheduled before the end of the year. And only one other execution had still been set for 2026.
Sutton — who has been on death row since his conviction in the 1992 murders of siblings Tommy Griffin and Connie Branam — was scheduled to be executed on December 3, but will now get to live to see 2027.
On February 21, 1992, Sutton, his uncle James Dellinger, and Griffin had a drunken night out that turned violent after a fight, according to court records obtained by Fox News.
Griffin was later found, shirtless and scratched up, on a roadside, where officers picked him up and took him to jail on a public-intoxication charge, court documents reportedly add.
Sutton and Dellinger promptly bailed him out, and about half an hour later, witnesses reported hearing three gunshots near the area where Griffin was later found dead of a shotgun wound to the head.
The following day, Branam went with Sutton and Dellinger to search for her brother at a bar they had visited the night before, prosecutors said. Not long after that, her badly burned body was reportedly discovered in a scorched car.
Dellinger had also been sentenced to death, but died of natural causes on death row before an execution could be carried out.
Currently, Sutton has yet to be given a new execution date for next year. Moreover, it remains unclear when Tennessee will resume its executions.
Alana Mastrangelo-Wrask is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
