Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, has survived two lethal injections intended to execute her, her lawyers said.
In a federal court filing seeking to halt the execution late on Wednesday, her lawyers said Pike was “still alive and snoring” at 0126 GMT on Thursday, adding that she had not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat, NBC News reported.
Her legal team later said she had been taken to a nearby hospital, but her condition remained unclear.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” her attorneys said in a statement. “Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital. We have not been informed as to her condition.”
Pike had been scheduled for execution at 1500 GMT at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years.
Journalists were among the witnesses present when the injections were administered.
“It appears this did not go how this was supposed to go,” said John North, an investigative journalist with WBIR who witnessed the procedure.
“When we left the building, so far as we knew, she was probably still alive.”
An ambulance with its lights flashing was seen leaving the prison during a livestream, though it was unclear whether it was transporting Pike.
Supreme Court clears execution
The execution attempt went ahead hours after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for it to proceed, with liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
“The Court’s decision... unnecessarily prevents that [lower] court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim,” the dissenting justices wrote.
“Worse, the Court grants such extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts.”
The Supreme Court had also rejected an application on Tuesday to stay the execution. That application argued that Pike’s history of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood condition meant lethal injection would cause “needless suffering”.
Clemency appeals
Pike’s case has fuelled debate over capital punishment for people who committed crimes at a young age and the treatment of prisoners with mental health conditions.
She was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, at a job training camp for young people.
Pike’s lawyers sought clemency on the grounds of 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 wrote in a petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who declined to intervene.
Independent UN rights experts had also urged US and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her death sentence.
“Pike’s execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row,” they said.
Only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
