Christa Pike’s attempted execution fails as she is rushed to hospital after surviving two doses of lethal injection
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Tennessee has failed in its attempt to execute Christa Pike, who survived and was rushed to hospital late on Wednesday despite being administered with two doses of a lethal drug.
Pike was due to be the first woman put to death in the state in 200 years, after a court overturned a late stay of execution. Experts say her survival is unprecedented.
The attempted execution took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at about 8pm local time (1am BST). Pike, 50, was being executed for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student she tortured and killed when she was 18.
Officials administered pentobarbital to Pike twice, and witnesses reported that the curtain to the execution chamber was drawn and reopened on two separate occasions as the procedure continued. Reporters present were eventually told to leave, according to the Associated Press.
The execution had already been delayed for hours after a panel of the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay to allow further review of her legal challenges. The US Supreme Court later lifted that stay at Tennessee's request in a 6-3 decision, allowing the execution to proceed before Pike's death warrant expired at midnight.
Pike's federal public defenders told the Tennessee Supreme Court she was "still alive and snoring" and asked the court to immediately halt the process.
"Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," her attorneys, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said.
Pike was later taken to hospital where she was "being provided life-saving measures,” one of her attorneys told BBC.
Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter defended the agency's handling of the execution.
"The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office,” she said, in a statement to the Tennessean newspaper.
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility."
Pike's lawyers rejected that account in their statement to the newspaper.
"Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."
