Tennessee execution attempt halted after inmate survives two injections
Christa Pike remained alive after Tennessee officials administered two doses of pentobarbital during an attempted lethal injection, according to media witnesses cited by the Associated Press. Her lawyers sought emergency court intervention after a legal dispute over her sentence and the consideration of childhood abuse and neglect evidence.
A Tennessee execution attempt was left unresolved on Wednesday after death-row inmate Christa Pike remained alive following two doses of a lethal drug, according to media witnesses cited by the Associated Press. Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Witnesses reported that Pike was still awake and snoring more than 40 minutes after the second dose of pentobarbital.
The Tennessee Department of Correction had not immediately explained what happened. Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion seeking to halt the execution while authorities had not provided a detailed public account by Thursday morning. The failed attempt followed a legal dispute over whether Pike’s sentence should be reconsidered.
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit temporarily halted the execution earlier on Wednesday, saying it needed more time to consider arguments concerning evidence of childhood sexual abuse and neglect. The US Supreme Court later overturned that stay, allowing Tennessee to proceed. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Slemmer, whom they knew from a Knoxville Job Corps training centre. Prosecutors said Slemmer was beaten and stabbed, and that a pentagram was carved into her body. Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the crime, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike’s lawyers have argued that her age, childhood abuse, neglect and mental-health history were not properly presented when her sentence was determined. Her clemency request was rejected by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.
If carried out, the execution would have been Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.
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