US death row inmate survives failed execution after two lethal injections

Headshot: Christa Pike | BBC

Christa Pike, a 50-year-old woman on death row in the United States, remained alive after Tennessee officials administered two doses of a lethal drug during an attempted execution on Wednesday.

Pike 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.

Media witnesses reported that Pike was still awake and snoring more than 40 minutes after the second dose of pentobarbital, according to the Associated Press.

The Tennessee Department of Correction did not immediately provide an explanation for what happened, while Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion seeking to halt the execution.

The development came after a dramatic legal battle earlier on Wednesday.

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had temporarily halted Pike’s execution shortly before it was due to begin, saying more time was needed to consider her arguments that evidence of childhood sexual abuse and neglect had not been properly considered when she was sentenced to death.

The US Supreme Court later overturned the stay, clearing the way for Tennessee to proceed with the execution.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision.

The murder in 1995

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, 17, killed Slemmer, whom they knew from the Knoxville Job Corps training centre in 1995.

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According to prosecutors, Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer after Pike accused her of trying to take her boyfriend. Slemmer was beaten and stabbed, and a pentagram was carved into her body. The case attracted widespread attention in Knoxville and became associated with the so-called “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death. Shipp was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole because he was 17 when the crime occurred.

Pike’s lawyers have argued that her age, severe childhood abuse and neglect, and mental health history should have been taken into account when determining her sentence.

Her lawyers previously said she suffered sexual abuse as a child and argued that crucial evidence about her background was not adequately presented to the jury.

Pike’s clemency request was rejected by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who said he had reviewed the case but would not intervene.

If completed, the execution would have made Pike the first woman put to death by Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Female executions are rare in the United States. According to figures cited by the Associated Press, 18 women have been executed in the country since capital punishment resumed in 1976, compared with more than 1,600 men.

As of Thursday morning, Tennessee authorities had not provided a detailed public explanation for why the attempted execution failed, while Pike’s lawyers were seeking emergency court intervention.