Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survives lethal execution attempt

Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee's effort to execute her by means of lethal injection yesterday (30 September), prison officials said, foiling the state's first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries.

Pike's condition following the ordeal was not immediately known, and it was not clear what legal avenues her lawyers or the state might pursue next after she was taken for medical treatment from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

The Tennessee Department of Correction defended its handling of the high-profile execution, which had been opposed by her lawyers and human rights experts due to Pike's age at the time of the crime and her history as the victim of childhood sexual abuse and untreated mental illness.

"The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office," the agency said in a statement.

"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," the statement concluded. Pike's lawyers filed a federal court motion during the process seeking to halt her execution, citing witnesses' accounts that "executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals, and Pike is still alive and snoring," NBC News reported.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who denied Pike's clemency petition on Monday, issued a statement after the botched execution, suspending all executions this year and calling for a "comprehensive, third-party review" of Pike's execution attempt, according to the Nashville Tennessean.

The failed execution is the second in Tennessee this year, after prison officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man convicted of murders after failing to find a suitable vein for his lethal injection.

The botched attempt on Wednesday came hours after the US Supreme Court lifted an 11th-hour lower-court stay of the execution, clearing the way for Pike, 50, to be put to death for her role in the 1995 torture and beating death of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.

Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she, 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and a third companion lured Slemmer, a classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational centre, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her.

The grisly nature of the slaying, which involved the perpetrators carving the shape of a pentagram in the victim's chest and taking a chunk of her skull as a souvenir of the carnage, drew intense media coverage at the time.

Pike and Shipp confessed to the killing, and both were convicted of first-degree murder.

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has spoken out in support of the execution.

Ambulance called

Journalists who witnessed the attempted execution described snoring, loud exhales, gasps, and complaints from Pike about discomfort in her arm. At times, the curtain was closed, and journalists could only hear sounds.

Clergy were called into the chamber twice, they said, before an ambulance was seen arriving at the prison and then leaving.

Aside from being the first woman the state of Tennessee has tried to execute in more than 200 years, Pike was also poised to become the only person in the modern era of US capital punishment to be executed in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.

In a 226-page petition asking the governor to commute Pike's death penalty to a life sentence without the possibility of parole, her lawyers earlier this week documented her history as the childhood victim of violence, neglect, and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17. They also cited diagnoses she received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Moreover, her lawyers pointed to evidence that Pike's mother drank heavily during pregnancy, contributing to faulty brain development that made it difficult for their client to control her impulses as a young person.

Pike was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in an assault on another inmate, according to the Correction Department.

Executions of female prison inmates are exceedingly rare in the US, with women accounting for just 18 of the 1,683 people put to death since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. Before Wednesday, Tennessee had executed 17 people.