Tennessee execution attempt fails after lethal injection drugs prove ineffective

A woman convicted of murder in the US state of Tennessee has been taken to hospital after surviving two doses of lethal injection drugs in a failed execution attempt, several media outlets reported Thursday, citing her lawyers and media witnesses.

Christa Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville. If carried out normally, Pike’s execution, scheduled for Wednesday, would have been the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Prosecutors said Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, lured Slemmer to a wooded area. Pike beat and cut Slemmer with a box cutter, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time, admitted carving a pentagram into her body. While Pike received the death penalty, Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Pike did not lose consciousness after two syringes of pentobarbital were administered, her attorneys said in emergency legal filings seen by the New York Times. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.

According to her lawyers, as cited by the newspaper, Pike was later taken to a nearby hospital, although they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials reportedly confirmed to a federal judge later that day that Pike was receiving medical care.

AP cited media witnesses as saying that Pike remained conscious after the injection was administered and at one point asked prison officials about a sensation in her arm. She continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain before media witnesses were escorted out.

Pike was initially scheduled to be executed in the morning, but a federal appeals court issued a temporary stay to consider her lawyers’ claims that her history of childhood sexual abuse and neglect had not been adequately presented at sentencing. The US Supreme Court later lifted the obstacle, allowing Tennessee to proceed with the execution that evening.

Commenting on the apparent failure to carry out an execution, the Tennessee Department of Correction stated that it “had followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the attorney general’s office.”

It was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. In May, officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners spent more than an hour trying unsuccessfully to place an IV for the pentobarbital.

Lethal injection is widely regarded as the most error-prone method of execution in the US. Since the beginning of 2020, 170 people have been executed in 17 states, with most executions taking place in Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. During that period, six states have recorded botched lethal injections, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that provides data and analysis on capital punishment.