Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike was taken to a hospital after authorities failed to complete her execution by lethal injection on Wednesday, according to her lawyers and witnesses at the execution site.
Pike had been scheduled to die at 10:00 a.m. local time at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee, United States, in what would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.
Her lawyers said the execution attempt was unsuccessful and that Pike was receiving treatment at a nearby hospital, although they said they had not been informed about her medical condition.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement.
Corrections authorities in Tennessee had not publicly confirmed what happened during the execution at the time of the report.
Witnesses, including journalists, were present when the state administered two injections of pentobarbital, the drug intended to cause death.
John North, an investigative journalist with WBIR who witnessed the procedure, said it appeared that the execution did not proceed as expected.
He said that when witnesses left the facility, Pike appeared to still be alive.
An ambulance was also seen leaving the execution facility with its emergency lights flashing during a livestream of the proceedings. It was not immediately confirmed whether Pike was inside the ambulance.
The execution attempt came only hours after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed with Pike’s execution.
Three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision.
In their dissent, the justices argued that the ruling prevented a lower court from fully considering Pike’s legal claims and allowed the state to proceed with the execution before litigation surrounding her conviction had been completely resolved.
Mental health and age concerns
Pike’s case had generated renewed debate over the execution of people who committed serious crimes when they were very young.
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend, according to court records, beat and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp for young people in Tennessee.
The murder attracted national attention after Slemmer’s body was discovered with a pentagram carved into her chest.
Pike’s lawyers had appealed for clemency, arguing that her age at the time of the crime and her mental health history should be taken into consideration.
In a clemency petition submitted to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, her lawyers said Pike had been deeply mentally ill when she committed the crime. Governor Lee, however, declined to intervene.
Pike’s legal team had also argued before the Supreme Court that her history of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood disorder raised concerns about whether lethal injection would cause unnecessary suffering.
The Supreme Court had rejected her request for a stay of execution on Tuesday.
Independent United Nations human rights experts had also called on US and Tennessee authorities to stop the execution and commute Pike’s death sentence.
They said her case involved years of physical and psychological suffering, including childhood abuse and nearly three decades spent in solitary confinement on death row.
The execution attempt comes amid broader debate in the United States over capital punishment and its application to women and offenders who were very young when they committed their crimes.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976.
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