Tennessee Death Row Prisoner Christa Pike Survives Lethal Injections | Death penalty news

Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a classmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee’s effort to execute her by lethal injection, prison officials said.

Her lawyers said Wednesday evening that she was taken from the prison in an ambulance and was being treated at a hospital, but they said they had not been informed of her condition.

Authorities gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, his lawyers said in court filings.

Reporters who witnessed the attempted execution described Pike’s snoring, loud exhalations, panting and complaints of pain, as well as kicking so frequently that she dropped the sheets placed on her, according to NBC News.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he had ordered “a thorough third-party review to determine exactly what happened” and that the remainder of the planned execution will not take place this year.

“Enforcing a lawfully imposed sentence is among the state’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be carried out in a manner that is not only lawful and constitutional, but also effective,” he said.

The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement that it “followed every step of the state’s statutory and established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

The state’s execution protocol calls for a second set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not specify what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.

Supreme Court decision

Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed Wednesday for a murder she committed when she was 18. Her murder would have been the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in at least 200 years.

An appeals court ruling stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it began, but a Supreme Court ruling later overturned that stay.

Following the highest court’s decision, authorities attempted to carry out the execution as planned.

At 7:46 p.m. local time (11:46 p.m. GMT), prison officials closed the curtain separating Pike from the media listening room. The issue was raised three minutes later, when witnesses said Pike could be heard snoring loudly.

The curtain closed at 8:06 p.m. Witnesses continued to hear Pike snoring until the microphone was turned off around 8:53 p.m. (0053 GMT), when they were asked to leave the area. Emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.

Previously, the execution was halted when the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in favor of a stay.

The appeals court said more time was needed to determine whether Pike’s childhood sexual abuse allegations were fully considered during his sentencing.

Later Wednesday, the Supreme Court authorized the execution. Its conservative majority did not explain the decision, while the three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that vacating the stay “needlessly prevents” the appeals court from properly considering Pike’s request.

Tennessee’s attorney general argued that delaying the execution traumatized the family of Pike’s victim, Colleen Slemmer, and rewarded what he called “abusive delay tactics.”

The murder in 1995

Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of stabbing and beating to death in 1995 Slemmer, 19, their classmate at a vocational training center in Knoxville.

Shipp was 17 when the crime occurred and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one to be sentenced to death.

Pike does not deny committing the murder, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse, including that she was raped in early childhood.

“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century the criminal justice system is about to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider these facts in assessing the moral culpability of the accused,” her lawyers wrote in a filing.

After the murder, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In her request for clemency, she said she had initially intended to fight Slemmer, but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put on the brakes.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old. It took me many years to realize the severity of what I had done. Even longer to come to terms with how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, their sister, their friend. It sickens me now to think that I had the capacity to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother said she wanted Pike’s death sentence carried out after waiting decades for his execution.

Tennessee has not executed a woman in at least 200 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the United States, representing about 1 percent of all executions, according to the center.