A condemned Tennessee inmate was rushed to hospital after appearing to survive two rounds of lethal injection drugs, prompting an emergency legal challenge and raising fresh questions about the state's execution procedures.
Lawyers for Christa Pike, who was due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries, filed an urgent motion as the execution unfolded, claiming: "Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring."
Failed execution attempt
Pike was convicted at the age of 18, alongside her boyfriend, for stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.
After the failed execution attempt, one of Pike's attorneys later told the BBC that she was "being provided life-saving measures" following the injections. Death penalty experts described the apparent failure as without modern precedent, while Pike's legal team said they had received no official update on her condition.
"We have not been informed as to her condition," the lawyers said in a statement.
Governor orders review
Governor Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred" and that planned executions will not be carried out 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.
The Tennessee Department of Correction stated that they "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office." The state's execution protocol requires a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered "if the inmate is not deceased" following the first set, though it makes no provision for what should occur if the subject remains alive after the second set.
Legal challenges and execution details
Pike had been set to become the first woman executed in over 200 years on Wednesday, though the execution had previously been postponed while the court considered whether Pike's allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been fully taken into account during her sentencing.
The Supreme Court's three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling, with Ms Sotomayor writing that it clears the way for the execution to happen "before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered". Despite an appeals court halting the lethal injection just an hour before it was scheduled to commence, the high court ultimately ruled that the execution should go ahead.
Pike was administered two doses of pentobarbital, according to her lawyers' court filings submitted late on Wednesday. Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, described what Pike endured as "singular and unparalleled". Seven other individuals have survived medical complications owing to the execution team's inability to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, yet nobody has remained alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.
Pike's legal team stated: "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."
Media witnesses observing from an adjoining room reported that officials raised the curtains to the execution chamber at 7.27pm, revealing Pike strapped to a gurney. Pike remained conscious and at one point lifted her head and questioned prison officials about whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. It remained unclear what she was referring to.
By 8.26pm, execution witnesses confirmed that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. Pike could still be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was switched off at 8.53pm, at which point an announcement was made to escort media witnesses from the area.
Background of the case
The murder case attracted widespread media attention as Colleen was discovered with an inverted pentagram - a symbol linked to satanic groups - carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving the symbol herself.
Despite Pike's assertions that she did not 'even realise the gravity of what I'd done', two fellow inmates at the camp subsequently testified that she had boasted about the murder both before and afterwards, even displaying a fragment of Colleen's skull to them.
Colleen Slemmer's mother made the journey to Tennessee from Florida for the execution, disclosing she has spent decades waiting to witness Pike's sentence being carried out. She said: "Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run. Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst."
Following the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she claimed she had only intended to fight Ms Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied assault when she could not "put the brakes on".
"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. 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," Pike said in a statement.
