Listen to this articleDear 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated using AI-based technology. Pronunciation errors may occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve results. Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a classmate three decades ago, survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection Wednesday night, prison officials said, thwarting the state’s first attempt to execute a woman in two centuries. Institution in Nashville. The Tennessee Department of Corrections defended its handling of the high-profile execution, which its lawyers and human rights experts had opposed because of Pike’s age at the time of the crime, her history as a victim of child sexual abuse and untreated mental illness. “The Tennessee Department of Corrections followed every step of the state’s legally established execution protocol, approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” the agency said in a statement. “For additional procedures beyond those performed tonight, Christa Pike has been transported to an outside medical facility,” the statement concluded. His attorneys said in court documents that officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital. Tennessee announced nearly two years ago a change from a three-drug protocol previously used for executions. Governor stays execution Pike’s lawyers filed a motion in federal court during the proceedings seeking to stop his execution, citing witness accounts that “executioners had injected both syringes with lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring,” NBC News reported. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who denied Pike’s clemency petition Monday, said in a statement that he had ordered “a thorough third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year. Media witnesses recount the moments before Pike’s execution was stopped Wednesday night in Nashville, Tennessee. Behind them is a photograph of murder victim Colleen Slemmer. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press) The botched execution is the second in Tennessee this year, after corrections officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man convicted of murder after failing to find a suitable vein for his lethal injection. Wednesday’s failed attempt came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an 11-hour lower court stay of execution, clearing the way for Pike, 50, to be executed for her role in the 1995 torture and beating death of Colleen Slemmer, 19, in Knoxville. Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, of 17 years old, and a third classmate lured Slemmer, a classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational center, to a wooded area where they tortured and killed her. The gruesome nature of the murder, in which the perpetrators carved the shape of a pentagram into the victim’s chest and took a piece of his skull as a souvenir of the killing, attracted intense media coverage at the time. Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, after Pike’s execution was stopped. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press) Pike and Shipp confessed to the murder and were both found guilty of first-degree murder. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has spoken out in favor of the execution. An ambulance arrives. Journalists who witnessed the attempted execution described Pike’s snoring, loud exhalations, panting, and complaints about discomfort in his arm. Sometimes the curtain was closed and journalists could only hear sounds. Clerics were called to the chamber twice, they said, before an ambulance was seen arriving at the prison and then leaving. In addition to being the first woman the state of Tennessee has attempted to execute in more than 200 years, Pike was also about to become the only person in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States to be executed in Tennessee for a crime committed when she was a teenager. In a 226-page petition asking the governor to commute Pike’s death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, her attorneys earlier this week documented her history as a child victim of violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17. They also cited diagnoses he received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. May Martinez, left, Slemmer’s mother, leaves Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of Pike’s planned execution. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press) Additionally, his attorneys pointed to evidence that Pike’s mother drank heavily during pregnancy, contributing to defective brain development that made it difficult for their client to control his impulses when he was young. Pike was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in an assault on another inmate, according to the Department of Corrections. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 1,683 people have been executed since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Before Wednesday, Tennessee had executed 17 people.
