Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike has been taken to hospital after an attempt to execute her failed following two lethal injections, her lawyer said.
Pike, 50, was administered two doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at about 20:00 local time on Wednesday, but remained alive.
Her legal team filed an emergency motion to halt the execution while it was taking place, saying: “Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring.”
One of Pike’s lawyers told the BBC that she was “being provided life-saving measures” in hospital after the two injections.
District Judge Clifton L Corker later issued a ruling stating that “medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion”.
Dr Joel Zivot, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine who said he had been retained by Pike’s legal team as a medical expert, said she may not have received enough pentobarbital into her bloodstream to cause respiratory and cardiovascular failure.
“It’s very possible that as a consequence of the delay of the beginning of resuscitation she will have a brain injury,” Zivot said in an email.
The attempted execution followed a series of last-minute legal challenges by Pike’s lawyers, including two unsuccessful efforts to stop the lethal injection at the US Supreme Court.
Late on Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned a reprieve granted earlier in the day by a lower court, which had paused the execution to consider arguments in the case.
The Supreme Court had previously rejected an appeal by Pike’s lawyers, who argued that jurors did not have the opportunity to consider evidence of her documented history of childhood sexual abuse before sentencing her to death in 1996.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers.
Pike was 18 at the time and, alongside her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed Slemmer.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had travelled from Florida with her husband to witness the execution.
Speaking to NBC News after Wednesday’s events, Martinez said: “It was a mess.”
Martinez had previously told the Associated Press that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” Martinez said.
According to the Associated Press, the execution protocol in Tennessee provides a secondary set of drug syringes if a person does not die after the first set. However, it does not specify what should happen if the person remains alive after the second set.
In a statement reported by US media, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he had ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred”.
He also said the state’s final scheduled execution of the year would not proceed as planned.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it stood by its actions during the attempted execution.
“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” department spokesperson Dorinda Carter told the Tennessean newspaper.
“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,” she said.
Pike’s lawyers disputed the state’s account.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution.
“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
Pike’s lawyers had previously raised concerns about the execution method, including difficulties accessing her veins and the condition of the pentobarbital.
Tennessee’s governor rejected Pike’s request for clemency earlier this week. She is the only woman currently on the state’s death row.
In her clemency petition, Pike said she intended to beat Slemmer rather than kill her but was unable to “put the brakes on”.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid,” she said in a statement. “It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Pike’s defence had also argued that her history of childhood sexual abuse should have been considered during sentencing. The state had previously disputed her claims but later said it did not contest that she had suffered sexual abuse and rape.
The murder of Slemmer in 1995 attracted widespread media attention in Knoxville after she was found with an inverted pentagram carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving the symbol herself.
Two other residents at the training camp later testified that Pike had spoken about the murder before and after it happened and showed them a piece of Slemmer’s skull.
The failed execution was not the first in Tennessee this year to encounter difficulties. The execution of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, was postponed in May after staff were unable to find a vein to administer the lethal drug.
Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the US, compared with 1,663 men, according to available data. Women account for about 1% of executions since then.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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