Death row killer Christa Pike 'still alive' after Tennessee lethal injection attempt, say witnesses

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Tennessee officials were forced to stop the execution of Christa Gail Pike partway through on Wednesday, according to media witnesses present at the scene.

Her death sentence had briefly looked uncertain after an appeals court intervened just an hour before the lethal injection was due to begin - only for the Supreme Court to step in and reverse that decision.

Officials appeared to administer two doses of the drug pentobarbital - but more than 40 minutes after the second dose, Pike was reportedly still awake and snoring. Then, at 8.53pm, reporters watching on were suddenly told to leave.

Dorinda Carter, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said she had no immediate explanation to offer.

Tennessee Department of Correction

With the clock ticking, Pike's lawyers scrambled to file an emergency motion with the Supreme Court late on Wednesday, demanding an immediate halt to the execution, reports The Associated Press. They argued she was being left in "unnecessary agony," violating her constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, states the report. Further motions were also filed with the Sixth Circuit and a district court.

It followed an earlier Supreme Court ruling that morning, which had reinstated the execution after it looked set to be delayed - a delay that would have postponed what was shaping up as the first time in roughly 200 years that Tennessee had put a woman to death.

Pike had originally been scheduled to die that morning for a killing she carried out at just 18 years old. Spectators were already in place at Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Institution when news broke that the Sixth Circuit had narrowly voted, 2-1, in favour of pausing proceedings, ruling that more time was needed to consider whether Pike's claims of childhood sexual abuse had been properly weighed at her original sentencing.

No reasoning was offered by the court's conservative bloc, though its three liberal members pushed back in a joint dissent, insisting Pike's allegations warranted further examination.

Soon after, a Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson confirmed the state intended to push ahead with the execution before a midnight deadline.

Christa Pike's execution was halted just one hour before it was due to take place (Tennessee Department of Corrections)

Pike and her then-boyfriend were convicted of fatally stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995 - a fellow student at a Knoxville job training facility. The case made national headlines at the time, partly because a pentagram carved into Slemmer's body fed into the wider "satanic panic" gripping America through the 1980s and '90s.

Following the stay, Tennessee's attorney general moved immediately to appeal to the Supreme Court. Prosecutors, in their appeal, accused Pike's legal team of deploying "abusive delay tactics" and claimed the late intervention had caused further anguish for Slemmer's relatives.