Woman survives two doses of lethal drug in failed execution in Tennessee

A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure.

Pike was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her lawyers said.

“We have not been informed as to her condition,” Pike’s lawyers said in a statement.

Governor Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that scheduled executions will not be carried out this year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s 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,” he said.

Tennessee only has one other execution scheduled this year.

Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution at 10am local time on 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 US Supreme Court overturned that stay.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her lawyers said in court filings late on Wednesday. Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled”.

Seven other people have survived medical problems due to the 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.

Pike’s lawyers said: “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.”

Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7.27pm, showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

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.

By 8.26pm, execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8.53pm. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter told media witnesses she was unable to immediately provide information about what happened.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late on Wednesday to the US Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” 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 district court.

The motion also asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures: “Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs.”

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 a pentagram that was carved on Ms Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

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 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.

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 US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatised Ms Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

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’s claims deserved a closer look.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision to vacate the stay interfered with the Sixth Circuit court’s handling of the case and “unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim”.