Tennessee Death Row Inmate Survives Two Lethal Injection Attempts, Lawyer Says

Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, was still alive Wednesday night after prison officials administered two lethal-injection doses, her lawyer said.

Pike’s legal team said in a federal court motion filed Wednesday night that the attempted execution had failed to kill her and asked the court to stop the process.

At 8:26 p.m. local time, execution witnesses reported that officials had “injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals” but that Pike remained alive and was snoring, her attorneys wrote in the filing, according to The Associated Press.

Her lawyers said Pike had “not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat.” They also reported that the curtains separating the death chamber from witnesses had been lowered twice, the outlet said.

Officials appeared to administer two doses of pentobarbital, but Pike remained awake and continued snoring more than 40 minutes after the second dose, according to The Associated Press.

At 8:53 p.m., officials escorted media witnesses from the area, the AP reported. The Tennessee Department of Corrections told reporters it could not immediately provide details about what had occurred.

Emergency vehicles were seen arriving at and leaving the prison, according to the outlet.

The development came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stay, temporarily clearing the way for Pike to become the first woman executed in Tennessee since the early 1800s.

The Supreme Court granted Tennessee’s request to vacate a stay imposed Wednesday morning by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, allowing the state to proceed with Pike’s execution.

The Sixth Circuit had issued the stay in a 2-1 ruling, ordering that it remain in place “until further notice” while judges considered filings from Pike’s attorneys and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.

Tennessee immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to lift the stay.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the Supreme Court’s ruling. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined her dissent.

Sotomayor said the Sixth Circuit should have been allowed more time to review Pike’s unresolved legal challenge before the execution moved forward.

“In capital cases, ‘[a]ppreciation of our own fallibility, and respect for the judgment of an appellate tribunal,’ demand caution before ‘acting irretrievably,’” Sotomayor wrote.

She said the Supreme Court had “chosen to overlook that principle precisely when it matters most.”

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Pike, now 50, was 18 in 1995 when she, her boyfriend and another person beat, kicked and stabbed 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer to death in a brutal “satanic” attack. Pike told investigators the assault lasted between 30 minutes and an hour, according to court documents.

Court records state that Pike and Slemmer knew each other through the Job Corps Center, a vocational program in Knoxville.

Pike accused Slemmer of “trying to get [her] boyfriend” and “running her mouth,” according to the case file. The day before the killing, she told another classmate that she wanted to kill Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day,” the records state. Pike was carrying a box cutter and a meat cleaver.

Pike and her accomplices lured Slemmer out, telling her they wanted to go to a music store and pick up some marijuana they’d hidden in a park nearby.

Pike attacked her, knocked her to the ground and hit her in the face with her knee and foot, according to court documents.

At one point, Slemmer broke away from Pike and tried to flee, but Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, grabbed her and held her down while Pike slashed her with the box cutter. The victim begged for her life, but the attackers kept going. At some point, they gagged her with a hair tie.

Shipp also carved pentagrams into the victim’s face and chest.

At trial, forensic psychiatrist Dr. William Bernet testified that the crime had “satanic elements” but also appeared to involve “the phenomenon of collective aggression, in which a group of people become emotionally aroused and ‘the end result is that they engage in some kind of violent, extremely violent activity,'” court records show.

Dr. Eric Engum testified that Pike had been diagnosed with “very severe borderline personality disorder” in addition to showing signs of cannabis dependence and depression. However, he said, she had no symptoms of brain damage or insanity.

Pike took a piece of the victim’s crushed skull as a trophy and later showed it off in school, recounting that Slemmer had begged the trio to stop, according to court records. Pike told the friend she’d cut Slemmer’s throat a half-dozen times and then smashed her head with a rock. She showed off her bloodstained sneakers to another classmate and brought Slemmer’s skull fragment to breakfast the next morning.

Neither Shipp nor the third attacker, Shadolla Peterson, received death sentences. Shipp was under 18 at the time and not eligible for capital punishment. Peterson testified for the state.

Pike’s supporters counter that her defense did a poor job presenting mitigating factors before her sentencing, including untreated bipolar disorder and PTSD stemming from repeated domestic violence and sexual assaults. Just under 25,000 people had signed a petition to Gov. Bill Lee asking him to commute her death sentence to life in prison.