‘It was a mess’: Tennessee fails to execute woman after 2 lethal injections
Caroline MolloyAn injection of a lethal drug failed to execute the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row Wednesday, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.
Attorneys for Christa Pike said early Thursday that she was being treated at a hospital, but they did not know her condition. A spokesperson for the Department of Correction did not answer an emailed question Wednesday evening about whether she was alive but said she was “transported to an off-site medical facility.”
Pike, 50, is the state’s only woman on death row. She was convicted of murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995 and sentenced to death. Pike was 18 at the time of the murder.
In a news conference Wednesday night, journalists who witnessed the failed execution described snoring and complaints from Pike about pain, as well as her kicking her feet so often that she knocked off the sheets laid on her. At times, the curtain was closed and journalists could only hear sounds.
In a federal court filing seeking to halt her execution, Pike’s lawyers said witnesses saw executioners injecting “both syringes of lethal injection chemicals,” but that Pike remained alive.
They said Pike “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat” and that curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice,” according to the lawyers.
