\n<\/p>\n
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — <\/span>Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike<\/a> to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted the one remaining execution for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn\u2019t been told about her condition. <\/p>\n She had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.<\/p>\n Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday. <\/p>\n Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered \u201ca comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred\u201d and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.<\/p>\n \u201cCarrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State\u2019s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it \u201cfollowed every step of the State\u2019s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General\u2019s Office.\u201d<\/p>\n The state’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered \u201cif the inmate is not deceased\u201d after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.<\/p>\n Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is \u201csingular and unparalleled.\u201d <\/p>\n Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team’s failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said. <\/p>\n Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,\u201d she said in her \u201clast\u201d words. She described herself as at peace. <\/p>\n But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.<\/p>\n By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered. <\/p>\n Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.<\/p>\n Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in \u201cunnecessary agony\u201d and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and a district court.<\/p>\n It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection<\/a> of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.<\/p>\n Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer\u2019s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the \u201csatanic panic\u201d of the 1980s and 1990s. <\/p>\n Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike\u2019s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.<\/p>\n The attorney general\u2019s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer\u2019s family and rewarded \u201cabusive delay tactics\u201d by Pike\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike\u2019s claims deserved a closer look. <\/p>\n Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.<\/p>\n As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.<\/p>\n Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike\u2019s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated. <\/p>\n After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn\u2019t \u201cput the brakes on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I\u2019d done,\u201d Pike said in a statement.<\/p>\n Slemmer\u2019s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter\u2019s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike\u2019s sentence carried out.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,\u201d May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.<\/p>\n Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment after the execution was halted.<\/p>\n The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike\u2019s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body. <\/p>\n Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.<\/p>\n Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.<\/p>\n Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series<\/a> for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure<\/a> its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n This story has been updated to correct that Pike had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. local time, not 11 a.m. and that the lawyers filed an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court, not U.S.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n