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A lethal injection execution of Krista Pike, 50, convicted of killing a fellow student nearly three decades ago, failed at a Tennessee prison on Wednesday night, prison officials said.
Pike’s execution attempt was the first involving a woman in Tennessee in more than two centuries. Her condition was not immediately known after she was transferred from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville to an outside medical facility. It was also unclear what legal steps her lawyers or prosecutors would take next.
Human rights experts and Pike’s attorneys had opposed the execution, citing her young age at the time of the crime, a history of childhood sexual abuse and mental illness. The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), however, said the execution had been carried out in accordance with the state’s lawful protocol, approved by the attorney general’s office.
According to NBC News, Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency application in federal court during the execution. Citing witnesses, they said Pike remained alive and was snoring after execution personnel administered chemicals through two syringes.
Following the incident, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced a suspension of all executions in the state for the remainder of the year and called for a “comprehensive and independent third-party review”. It was the second failed execution attempt in Tennessee this year. In May, an execution was halted after officials were unable to find a suitable vein in a male inmate.
The execution had been cleared to proceed after a lower federal court’s stay was lifted on Wednesday by the US Supreme Court.
Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Ship, along with another accomplice, lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a vocational centre in Knoxville, to a wooded area and killed her after subjecting her to torture. The brutality of the crime drew widespread media attention.
Reporters said Pike could be heard snoring and breathing heavily during the execution attempt, while she also complained of discomfort in her arm. Religious advisers were called to her cell twice, and an ambulance was later seen entering and leaving the prison.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 18 of the 1,683 people executed in the US since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 have been women. Before Wednesday’s failed attempt, Tennessee had carried out 17 executions.