Failed execution attempt for Christa Pike, who survived lethal injections

Request for commutation of sentence

Given the situation, the woman's lawyers requested that the sentence be commuted. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. On Wednesday she was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital, but she survived, according to her lawyers. She was then taken to hospital by ambulance. She was 18 when, together with her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, she beat, tortured and killed the young 19-year-old, her classmate.

The failed execution attempt

The execution of the sentence was at the center of a tough legal battle until the last minute, culminating in the authorization of the United States Supreme Court to proceed with lethal injections. The victim's mother, who was among those who wanted the execution to take place and had traveled to Tennessee to witness it, told NBC News that the failed execution attempt "was a disaster."

The condemnation

Christa Pike had been found guilty of the murder of Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at the Knoxville Job Corps, a center that provided vocational training to young people from families in difficulty, with the complicity of her boyfriend at the time. Pike, an adult, was sentenced to death a year later, while Shipp, who was a minor at the time of the events, was protected by the law against capital punishment and was sentenced to life in prison.