Christa Pike, a death row inmate in the US state of Tennessee, was given two lethal injections but is still alive. After this he was admitted to the hospital. His lawyer has given this information.
Pike's legal team filed a last-minute emergency petition to stop his sentencing. "Pike is unconscious, but his heart is still beating and his snoring can be heard," it said.
A lawyer for Pike told the BBC that 50-year-old Pike was being treated in hospital after being given two syringes of pentobarbital.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. The legal battle continued till the end to stop his punishment.
The result was that the US Supreme Court gave permission to proceed with the lethal injection process.
Pike was 18 years old when she, along with her then-boyfriend Tadaril Shipp, murdered 19-year-old Slemmer. Both of them met in a job training camp run for troubled teenagers. They beat Slammer, tortured him and then murdered him.
Slemmer's mother, May Martínez, was also in favor of giving Pike the death penalty. Speaking to NBC News about the recent incident, he said, "It was a strange mess."
This attempted death sentence took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night at around 8 pm local time.
According to AP news agency, two doses of a drug called pentobarbital were given to kill Pike. During this period the curtain of the witness room was closed twice.
AP reported that after some time the media persons present there were asked to leave.
Tennessee's sentencing protocol provides for the possession of a second set of drug syringes. If the person does not die after using the first set, then the second set can be used.
However, the protocol does not clearly state what will be done if the person remains alive even after giving the second set of syringes. As happened in Pike's case.
In a statement to US media, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he had ordered "an independent and comprehensive review to determine exactly what happened". He said the last death sentence to be carried out in the state this year will not be carried out as planned.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections has said all procedures were performed properly when Pike was given the fatal injection.
Tennessee Department of Corrections spokeswoman Dorinda Carter told The Tennessean newspaper, "The department followed every step of the state's established and legal protocols for executions approved by the Attorney General's Office."
He said, "The lethal injection chemicals used in the procedure have been consistently effective and no further procedures are permitted other than what was performed this evening. Christa Pike has been taken to an outside medical facility."
"Tonight the state of Tennessee once again failed to legally carry out the death penalty," Pike's legal team said in a statement to The Tennessean newspaper.
He said, "We take no pleasure in being proven right. But the issues raised by Pike were proven true. These included difficulty in accessing veins, rupture of veins, poor quality of pentobarbital and lack of immediate medical help if the condition worsened. All this happened under a protocol about which very little information is made public."
Pike's lawyers filed an emergency petition to halt his sentencing and give him medical attention after alleged irregularities in administering the lethal injection.
District Judge Clifton L. Issuing the order, Cork said that "medical staff have started providing the medical help sought in the petition."
Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine, told the BBC that Pike's legal team had appointed him as a medical expert. He said that an adequate amount of pentobarbital may not have reached Pike's blood during the attempt to execute him. Due to this, his breathing did not stop and his heart stopped functioning.
"It is very possible that the delay in providing him medical attention may have caused brain damage," Zivot said in an email.
After several last-minute legal efforts by Pike's legal team failed, the process of giving him a lethal injection moved forward.
The US Supreme Court had rejected two separate attempts to ban lethal injections.
Late on Wednesday night, the Supreme Court overturned the extension given by the lower court during the day. The lower court had sought more time to consider the arguments in Paik's case and hence had stayed the death sentence.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected an appeal by Paik's lawyers. Lawyers had argued that before sentencing Pike to death in 1996, the jury had not had the opportunity to consider documented evidence of childhood sexual abuse and its effects.
The defense said the state of Tennessee had been claiming in court for years that Pike had lied about being a victim of childhood sexual abuse.
However, at a recent hearing on how to sentence Pike to death, the state said it did not deny that Pike was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and rape.
The governor of Tennessee this week rejected Pike's appeal for clemency. Pike was the only woman to receive the death penalty in Tennessee at this time.
In his pardon petition, Pike said that his intention was to beat Slammer, not to kill him. But she could not stop herself.
In a statement she said, "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old girl. It took me years to understand the gravity of what I had done. And it took me even longer to accept how many lives I had affected. I took the life of someone's daughter, sister and friend. Now I am disgusted to think that I could have committed such a crime."
This murder, which took place in 1995, created quite a sensation in Knoxville, Tennessee. A symbol was found on Colleen's chest which is linked to satanic groups. However, Pike himself has denied creating this symbol.
Before the murder, Pike had accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to take her then-boyfriend away from her.
Two other camp residents later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder before and after it. He also said that Pike had shown him a piece of Colleen's skull.
Slamer's mother, Martinez, said over the weekend that she has waited decades to see Pike sentenced.
She told the AP that a group helped raise expenses for her and her husband to travel from Florida to Tennessee so they could watch Pike die.
"Not a day or a minute goes by that I don't think about Colleen. The holidays are the hardest time," Martinez said.
Since the Supreme Court re-introduced the death penalty in America in 1976, only 18 women have been sentenced to death. In comparison, 1,663 men have been given death sentence. This means that the number of women prisoners is only one percent of the total death sentences given in America.
Officials have not yet explained why the medicine given to Pike did not prove fatal. However, medical experts have given their own possible reasons for this.
Those who oppose the death penalty have also immediately reacted to this incident.
Maya Foa, chief executive of international legal organization Reprieve, said: "We can't know exactly what went wrong because so much happens behind the scenes. Every step of the lethal injection process is shrouded in secrecy, so that the state's violence in taking a person's life remains hidden."
Authorities have not yet said whether they will seek the death penalty again. However, there have been cases in history when second attempts were made to kill prisoners sentenced to death.
Pentobarbital is a fast-acting drug, which slows down the activity of the body and nervous system. Doctors sometimes use it in the treatment of some diseases. But in large quantities it can also be used for lethal injection.
Its use in lethal injection was again brought under scrutiny last year. A review by the US federal government, conducted during the tenure of President Joe Biden, found that the drug was likely to cause "unnecessary pain and suffering".
The Biden government had banned its use in capital punishment at the federal level. But this ban did not apply to states like Tennessee, which can decide their own methods of imposing the death penalty.
In recent years, it has been difficult for some US states to obtain some of the drugs used in lethal injections. The reason for this is that many pharmaceutical companies have opposed such use of their medicines.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections has not directly responded to Pike's legal team's allegation that the pentobarbital used was "contaminated." Medicines can go bad due to many reasons. These also include their expiry date passing and their effectiveness decreasing.
However, the department defended its execution method, saying in a statement that "the lethal injection chemistry used in the protocol has been consistently effective."
Pike's execution is not the first in Tennessee in 2026 that did not go as planned.
The death sentence of Tony Carruthers, convicted of the kidnapping and murder of three people in 1994, was postponed in May. At that time the staff could not find a vein to give him the fatal injection. Governor Bill Lee postponed Carruthers' death sentence for one year.
According to DPI, lethal injection has the highest rate of such errors among execution methods.
In 2014, the case of Clayton Lockett's death sentence in Oklahoma was especially discussed. The three medicines used in lethal injection did not work properly. During this time one of his veins had burst. The death penalty process was stopped after about 20 minutes.
27 out of 50 states in America have the provision of death penalty under state law. The federal government can also impose the death penalty. President Donald Trump, who supports the death penalty, lifted the ban last year. However, since then the federal government has not yet given death sentence to anyone.
