Tennessee fails to execute Christa Pike after two doses of lethal drug

Tennessee has failed in its attempt to execute Christa Pike, who survived and was rushed to hospital late on Wednesday despite being administered two doses of a lethal drug.

Pike, 50, was due to be the first woman put to death in the state in 206 years, after a court overturned a late stay of execution. Experts say her survival is unprecedented.

Officials administered pentobarbital to Pike twice, but she was later heard snoring. Witnesses say the curtain to the execution chamber was drawn and reopened on two separate occasions before the procedure was halted and they were asked to leave.

The attempted execution took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at about 8pm local time.

Pike was being executed for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student she tortured and killed when she was 18.

The execution had already been delayed for hours after a panel of the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay to allow further review of her legal challenges.

The U.S. Supreme Court later lifted that stay at Tennessee's request in a 6-3 decision, allowing the execution to proceed before Pike's death warrant expired at midnight.

The failed attempt to execute Christa Pike is the second botched lethal injection in Tennessee this year, after officials spent about an hour trying and failing to establish IV access on inmate Tony Carruthers in May.

Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, said at the time the medical staff repeatedly stuck his arms and feet with needles, then attempted unsuccessfully to insert a central line through his collarbone and shoulder. Carruthers groaned in pain and bled from puncture wounds, she said.

Governor Bill Lee halted the attempt after more than an hour and later granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve.

More than 40 doctors and nurses wrote to Mr Lee afterwards, calling for executions to be paused and for health workers to be removed from the process, arguing Tennessee's rules conflict with medical ethics guidelines set out by the American Medical Association, which bars doctors from participating in executions.

Nine Republican state lawmakers have joined defence attorneys in demanding a moratorium on the death penalty and an overhaul of the state's execution methods.

Since 2020, 170 people have been executed across 17 states, mostly in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Six states have recorded botched lethal injections in that time.

Christa Gail Pike survived on Wednesday after being given two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital, according to her lawyers.

Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and was taken by an ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn't been told about her condition.

She had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday. The Biden administration had previously removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol for single-drug lethal injections over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

Christa Pike, 50, remained alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection

Two decades ago, Helen Roberts interviewed Christa Pike, the youngest woman on death row, and saw a vulnerable young woman shaped by severe trauma. Roberts looks at how the system failed her long before her terrible crime

Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is "singular and unparalleled."

Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Pike believed Slemmer had insulted her and was trying to take her boyfriend away from her.

The murder drew intense media attention in Knoxville, Tennessee, after Slemmer's body was found with an inverted pentagram, a symbol associated with satanic groups, carved into her chest.

Pike denied carving the symbol herself. Two other residents of the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the killing both before and after it took place, and had shown them a piece of Slemmer's skull.

In a clemency petition, Pike said she had intended to beat Slemmer, not kill her, but was unable to "put the brakes on".

"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid," she said in a statement. "It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."

Slemmer's mother said that she wanted the execution to go ahead, telling the Associated Press she had waited decades to see Pike's sentence carried out.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee said in a statement that he had ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and the remaining scheduled execution would not take place this year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” he said.

While the execution was under way, Pike's legal team filed an emergency motion in the Tennessee Supreme Court to immediately stop the process, saying that after receiving the two doses she was still alive and experiencing "unnecessary agony”.

They said the prolonged nature of the attempt had caused her "superadded physical and mental suffering".

"Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring."

Media witnesses, who were allowed into the witness room at 6.26pm before her execution, said Pike spoke what she thought would be her last words.

“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life,” she said, according to Nashville Banner. “And that is with love.”

Pike said she loved her detractors as much as she loved the people who were on her side.

“I’m at peace, I’m ready to be free. This is a happy day,” she finished.

Pike spoke during the process, telling witnesses: "My arm feels like it's about to burst open."

Witnesses reported being surprised by how much she spoke in the early stages of the process as she and her spiritual adviser also sang a song.

Later, they said, her breathing got laboured, but she did not appear to be in distress.

Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter defended the agency's handling of the execution.

“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office,” she said in a statement to the Tennessean newspaper.

“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility."

Pike's lawyers rejected that account in their statement to the newspaper.

"Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."