Tennessee inmate survives death row and taken to hospital

Tennessee inmate Krista Pike survived two lethal injections during her execution and was taken to the hospital. Authorities tried to carry out the death sentence following a decision by the US Supreme Court.

Before the execution began, the procedure was suspended about an hour before the scheduled date: a federal appeals court said it needed time to review the defense's arguments that the killer should not be executed.

However, the Supreme Court granted the request of the Tennessee prosecutor, who sought to cancel the delay, which was decided by the lower court.

The deferment was overturned by conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but he did not explain his decision. The court's three liberal members, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, opposed it.

The Supreme Court's decision was made on Wednesday around 18:00 local time. The execution warrant was due to expire at midnight.

Peake's lawyer later stated that she remained alive after two lethal injections that were given to her. Already at the moment when the execution procedure was underway, the prisoner’s lawyers submitted an urgent request to stop it.

“Pike is unconscious and her heart is still beating and she can be heard snoring,” the lawyers said in a statement.

One of her representatives told the BBC that Pike, 50, was being "resuscitated" after receiving two injections of pentobarbital, a powerful sleeping pill used in executions.

Witnesses to the execution reported that Pike continued to breathe after the injections, and then they were taken out of the room. Then emergency vehicles arrived at the prison.

Tennessee authorities have not yet commented on the situation.

Pike's lawyers told a local newspaper: “Tonight, the State of Tennessee again failed to carry out a legal execution. "We're not pleased that we were right, but Pike's concerns were justified."

Pike warned of "difficulty accessing veins, damage to veins when inserting a needle, tainted pentobarbital and lack of emergency medical attention when things inevitably go wrong," the statement said.

Professor Joel Zivot from Emory University Medical School (the prisoner's lawyers engage him as an expert) in an interview with the BBC suggested that Pike's blood did not have the concentration of pentobarbital necessary for death.

He also did not rule out that due to the delay in resuscitation, Pike could have suffered brain damage.

Why was she sentenced to death?

Pike, 50, had been awaiting execution since 1996 after she was convicted of murder.

If the sentence is carried out, Pike will become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Since the 1970s, only 18 women have been executed in the United States, compared with 1,663 men.

The US Supreme Court has previously rejected a request to stay the execution, and the governor of Tennessee earlier this week refused to grant Pike's request for clemency.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old girl they met at a vocational training camp for teens with behavior problems. This murder caused a violent reaction: the victim had a pentagram carved into his chest, a symbol of a satanic ritual.

Pike claimed Colleen abused her and tried to poach her boyfriend. Two other camp inmates later testified that Pike bragged about the murder both before and after it was committed, and also showed them a piece of the victim's skull.

A year later, she was sentenced to death, and Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Was she a victim herself?

However, Pike revealed a documented history of childhood sexual abuse and a life of neglect.

In the years since her conviction, Pike's defense has unearthed details of her childhood that they say the 1996 jury couldn't account for.

Her lawyers believe that if she were a teenager today, with such a background, she would not be sentenced to death even with all the evidence of guilt.

The defense noted that for years, the State of Tennessee had argued in court that Pike lied about being sexually abused as a child. However, at a recent hearing on the manner of her execution, the state suddenly announced that it did not dispute the fact that she had been sexually assaulted and raped.