Tennessee woman Christa Pike was taken to hospital on Thursday after authorities failed to carry out her execution, her lawyers said. Witnesses reported that she was still breathing after the lethal injections meant to kill her.
The convicted murderer was set to become the first woman executed by lethal injection in Tennessee in 200 years. The attempt came only hours after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for it to proceed.
Tennessee corrections officials have not publicly confirmed the outcome of the procedure, which involved two injections of pentobarbital. They also did not respond to an AFP request for information.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement. “Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital. We have not been informed as to her condition.”
Pike was scheduled to be executed at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Journalists were among the witnesses present.
Investigative journalist John North of WBIR, who witnessed the procedure, said it did not go as planned. “When we left the building, so far as we knew, she was probably still alive,” he said.
An ambulance with flashing lights was seen leaving the execution site during the livestream. It was not clear whether it was carrying Pike.
Supreme Court dissent
The procedure went ahead after the Supreme Court ruled it could proceed. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
They wrote that the decision “unnecessarily prevents” a lower court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim. They added that it allows the state to execute her before litigation over her conviction has run its course.
The Supreme Court had earlier rejected a stay application filed on Tuesday. It argued that Pike’s history of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood condition meant lethal injection would cause “needless suffering.”
Mental health and clemency
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp for young people. The case drew national attention after Slemmer’s body was found with a pentagram carved into her chest.
Her lawyers sought clemency over her age and mental health at the time of the killing. “She was 18 when she committed her crime, and she was deeply mentally ill,” they told Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who said he would not intervene.
Independent UN rights experts also urged US and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her sentence. They said it would cap a trajectory of severe suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976.
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