US Death Row Inmate Taken for Life-Saving Measures After Surviving Two Lethal Execution Injections

What the report says

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike was taken to a hospital after an attempted execution by lethal injection did not go as planned, according to the Nile Post report citing her lawyer and other US media. Pike’s legal team said she lost consciousness but still had a heartbeat, and they sought an emergency court order to stop the process while it was underway. Her attorney later said she was being given life-saving treatment after two doses of pentobarbital were administered.

The attempted execution took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday evening local time. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. The case had been the subject of last-minute legal challenges, but the US Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed after earlier efforts to halt it failed. Pike was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.

The report says Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered an independent review to determine what happened, and that the state’s final execution scheduled for the year will not proceed. Tennessee corrections officials said they followed the state’s protocol, while Pike’s lawyers argued the process was flawed and lacked adequate emergency medical backup. As background, US states that retain capital punishment sometimes face legal and medical disputes over execution procedures, especially when lethal injections do not work as intended.