Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who was set to be executed on Wednesday, survived two doses of a lethal drug that had been administered, according to her lawyers.<\/p>\n
Ms. Pike, who was convicted of the 1995 murder of a classmate, is the only woman on death row in Tennessee. Before the failed attempt to put her to death<\/a>, she was set to become the first woman to be executed in the state in more than 200 years.<\/p>\n Ms. Pike was in \u201ccritical condition, receiving life-saving care\u201d on Thursday afternoon, one of her lawyers said. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s what to know:<\/p>\n The Case<\/p>\n In 1996, a jury found Ms. Pike guilty of torturing and murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in an attack that she carried out with her boyfriend and a friend. They slashed Ms. Slemmer with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest and removed a piece of her skull.<\/p>\n Ms. Pike, who was 18 at the time of the killing, received the death penalty. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 at the time of the crime and was sentenced to life in prison, as he was too young to be eligible for capital punishment in Tennessee.<\/p>\n Ms. Pike, now 50, does not deny her guilt.<\/p>\n \u201cI run through this execution every day in my heart,\u201d she told The New York Times<\/a> in September. \u201cWhatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Some experts have questioned whether Ms. Pike would receive the same sentence if she were to be tried today. Her lawyers argued that Ms. Pike\u2019s initial legal defense did not adequately present her history of child sexual abuse and neglect.<\/p>\n She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, which her lawyers said contributed to her mental state during the murder.<\/p>\n \u201cChrista Pike would likely not be sentenced to death if she were tried today,\u201d said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. \u201cA lot has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n The Victim<\/p>\n Ms. Slemmer, 19, was living hundreds of miles from her family home in Florida when she was killed, having enrolled in a Job Corps educational program in Knoxville, Tenn., to pursue an interest in computers.<\/p>\n She had volunteered at the Special Olympics and loved bowling and computer games, according to her mother, May Martinez.<\/p>\n On the night she was killed, Ms. Slemmer tried to call her mother. The call quickly ended because of a shaky phone signal. When Ms. Martinez called back, her daughter \u201cwas already gone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms. Slemmer\u2019s family has remained firmly in support of Ms. Pike\u2019s sentence, and Ms. Slemmer\u2019s mother is adamant that Ms. Pike could not atone for the murder and should be executed.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody could ever, ever convince me she\u2019s changed,\u201d Ms. Martinez told The Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Legal Battle<\/p>\n Ms. Pike\u2019s lawyers have tried to stop the execution in recent weeks, arguing that she could support other women in prison and that her crime could not be separated from her traumatic childhood.<\/p>\n They also questioned whether lethal drugs could be administered without causing her excessive pain. In an appeal to the Supreme Court to pause the execution, Ms. Pike\u2019s lawyers argued that the execution was causing her \u201cunnecessary agony\u201d and that it violated the Eighth Amendment\u2019s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.<\/p>\n Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, a Republican, said on Monday that he would not intervene to allow Ms. Pike to serve the remainder of her life in prison.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, a federal appeals court briefly paused the execution and said more time was needed to consider the case. After a delay of about nine hours, the Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed, and the state raced to go ahead with it before the day ended and to avoid having to reschedule.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s three liberal justices dissented from the order allowing the execution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority \u201cunnecessarily prevents\u201d the appeals court from fully considering Ms. Pike\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n The Botched Execution<\/p>\n It was not immediately clear what went wrong with the administration of the lethal drug on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n Ms. Pike\u2019s lawyers said that while two syringes of pentobarbital had been administered, she did not lose consciousness. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.<\/p>\n Reporters who witnessed the execution attempt described Ms. Pike as somewhat alert. Although the curtains separating the execution chamber from the witnesses were closed for nearly an hour after the attempt, reporters said they could still hear breathing and steady snoring. <\/p>\n The Tennessee Department of Correction later said Ms. Pike had been taken to an off-site medical facility.<\/p>\n This was the second time this year that Tennessee had struggled to administer a lethal injection. In May, the state called off<\/a> an execution because staff members could not find a vein to administer lethal drugs.<\/p>\n The Fallout<\/p>\n After the bungled attempt to execute Ms. Pike, Governor Lee paused capital punishment in Tennessee and called for a review of the state\u2019s policies on how it puts people to death.<\/p>\n It was the second time in five years that Mr. Lee, a Republican, has paused executions because of questions over the effectiveness of the state\u2019s lethal injections. In 2022, he ordered a review after prison officials failed to properly test the drugs before an execution.<\/p>\n In at least one instance, a botched execution has led, effectively, to a reduced punishment. <\/p>\n In Alabama in 2018, an execution team struggled for nearly three hours to locate a vein in Doyle Hamm, injuring several of his organs before giving up. The state then entered into a confidential legal settlement, leaving Mr. Hamm in prison without parole. Mr. Hamm died of cancer<\/a> three years later.<\/p>\n However, states are far more likely to use administrative holds, revise their methods<\/a>, or proceed through courts<\/a> before trying again to execute.<\/p>\n Emily Cochrane, Ann E. Marimow and Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who was set to be executed on Wednesday, survived two doses of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[134564,134562,9,11,10,134563,287],"class_list":["post-362318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-christa-1976","tag-eighth-amendment-us-constitution","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-pike","tag-tennessee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}