Tennessee death row prisoner Christa Pike has been rushed to hospital still alive after receiving two lethal injections during a scheduled execution, her legal representatives have confirmed. Pike's defence team submitted an emergency motion to stop the execution while it was underway, stating: "Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring."
Life-saving measures after injections
One of Pike's solicitors informed the BBC that she was "being provided life-saving measures" after the two injections were administered. The state of Tennessee has not yet issued a statement.
The execution had been postponed on Wednesday, as the court required time to assess whether Pike's claims of childhood sexual abuse were adequately examined during her sentencing.
Supreme Court ruling and dissent
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". The high court ultimately determined that the execution would go ahead.
Background of the case
Pike was found guilty at age 18, together with her boyfriend, of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The 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 facility subsequently testified that she had boasted about the killing both before and afterwards, even displaying a fragment of Colleen's skull to them.
Victim's family and Pike's statement
Colleen Slemmer's mother made the journey to Tennessee from Florida for the execution, disclosing she has spent decades awaiting the implementation of Pike's sentence. 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 received diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency application, she claimed she had only intended to confront Ms Slemmer but killed her during 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.
