The Tennessee Department of Correction failed to successfully execute a female inmate when twice injecting her with a lethal drug after the Supreme Court stepped in to allow the execution to move forward.
Attorneys for Christa Pike, 50, said on Thursday that she was being treated at a local hospital, but that her condition was unknown.
In a news conference Wednesday night, journalists who witnessed the botched execution, said they could still hear Pike breathing and snoring for nearly an hour. At one point she complained of a burning pain in her arm.
Earlier this year in May, Tennessee called off another execution when medical staff could not find a vein to administer the lethal injection of drugs.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of a classmate and had been on death row for more than 30 years. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend together killed Colleen Slemmer. They slashed her with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest, and removed a chunk of her skull.
Pike did not deny her guilt but court proceedings centered around her allegations that she was sexually abused beginning when she was a child — abuse that the state did not dispute at a special hearing in August.
An hour before the scheduled 10:00am execution, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it needed to review the most recent claims made by her lawyers, who argued that Pike could support other women in prison and that her crime could not be separated from her traumatic childhood. A split decision from the court said they needed a “short” reprieve in carrying out the execution to properly analyze the case.
The Tennessee attorney general then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and nine hours later SCOTUS allowed the execution to proceed, with three liberal judges dissenting.
Before her execution, Pike wrote a letter to the press claiming she was at peace.
“I am not afraid to die,” wrote Pike, who has been on death row for more than three decades. “I’m only nervous about the process.”
Tennessee has now called off another planned execution in 2026 and will review the way it puts prisoners to death.