A Tennessee death row inmate has survived two lethal injections in a shocking execution attempt that ended with her being rushed to hospital.
Christa Pike, 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, attacked and tortured Slemmer, whom they had met at a job-training camp for troubled teenagers.
After administering two doses of pentobarbital, prison officials failed to complete the execution. Pike lost consciousness but reportedly still had a heartbeat and was audibly snoring, according to an emergency filing by her lawyers.
She was subsequently taken to an off-site medical facility.
The execution had already been the subject of an intense last-minute legal battle. Pike’s lawyers had argued that jurors failed to properly consider evidence of childhood sexual abuse when she was sentenced to death in 1996.
The US Supreme Court ultimately allowed the execution to proceed.
Pike’s legal team later accused Tennessee officials of struggling to access her veins and raised concerns about the lethal drug and the lack of emergency medical care during the procedure.
The state’s Department of Correction rejected those claims, saying officials followed the approved execution protocol.
Dr Joel Zivot, a medical expert retained by Pike’s lawyers, told the BBC that Pike may not have received enough pentobarbital to cause the respiratory and cardiovascular failure normally expected during an execution. He also warned that delays in resuscitation could have caused brain injury.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review of what happened and said another scheduled execution for the year would not proceed as planned.
Pike remains the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had travelled from Florida to witness the execution after waiting decades for Pike’s sentence to be carried out.
After the failed execution, Martinez summed up the night in three words:
“It was a mess.”
