Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee's effort to execute her by means of lethal injection late on Wednesday, prison officials said, foiling the state's first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries. Pike's condition following the ordeal was not immediately made known, and it was not clear after she was taken for medical treatment from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville what legal avenues her lawyers or the state might pursue next.
The Tennessee Department of Correction defended its handling of the high-profile execution, which had been opposed by human rights experts due to Pike's age at the time of the crime, her history as the victim of childhood sexual abuse, and untreated mental illness. "The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office," the agency said in a statement.
Pike's lawyers filed a federal court motion during the process seeking to halt her execution, citing witnesses' accounts that executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike was still alive, NBC News reported. The botched execution attempt came hours after the US Supreme Court lifted an 11th-hour lower-court stay of the execution, clearing the way for Pike, 50, to be put to death for her role in the 1995 torture and beating death of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
Journalists who witnessed the attempted execution described snoring, loud exhales, gasps, and complaints from Pike about pain, as well as her kicking her feet so often that she knocked off the sheets laid on her, according to NBC News. An ambulance was seen arriving at the prison and then leaving. Tennessee prison officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man convicted of murders after failing to find a suitable vein for a lethal injection.