US death row inmate hospitalised after surviving two lethal injections

LAST UPDATE | 18 hrs ago

A WOMAN IN Tennessee was taken to hospital after a failed attempt to carry out her execution, her lawyers said, with witnesses reporting the convicted murderer was breathing despite the injections intended to kill her.

Hours earlier, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Christa Pike (50) to become the first woman to be executed in the southern US state of Tennessee in 200 years – but the attempt failed.

Pike was scheduled for execution at 10am US time at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where witnesses including journalists were present for the administration of the injections.

A reporter at the execution said Pike was alive and “loudly snoring”.

Kim Chandler, a media witness with Associated Press, told CBS News that after the blinds of the execution chamber closed for the final time, Pike “could be heard loudly snoring, clearly very alive in the chamber until media witnesses were told to leave the area”.

The Pike case has sparked debate over capital punishment for young criminals as Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend murdered Colleen Slemmer.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee has said the state will halt an execution planned for later this year after the failed attempt. Lee called for a “comprehensive, third-party review” after Pike’s failed execution.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said that it “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol”, adding that Pike was subsequently taken to an “off-site medical facility”.

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The execution procedure went ahead hours after the US Supreme Court ruled that it could proceed, with liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissenting.

“The Court’s decision… unnecessarily prevents that (lower) court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim,” the dissenting justices wrote.

“Worse, the Court grants such extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts.”

Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed Colleen Slemmer (19) at a job training camp for young people.

The killing gained national attention after Slemmer’s body was found with a pentagram, often seen as a satanic symbol, carved in her chest.

Pike’s lawyers argued she should be granted clemency due to her young age and mental health issues at the time of the killing.

“She was 18 when she committed her crime, and she was deeply mentally ill,” they wrote in a clemency petition to Lee, who said he would not intervene.

The US Supreme Court had rejected Tuesday an application for a stay of execution, which argued that Pike’s history as a victim of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood condition meant a lethal injection would cause “needless suffering.”

Independent UN rights experts have urged the US government and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her death sentence.

In the United States, only 18 women have been executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.