Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike taken to hospital after failed execution

Christa Pike, a 50-year-old woman on death row in Tennessee, was taken to hospital after an attempted execution by lethal injection on Wednesday. According to witnesses, Pike was still breathing and snoring loudly more than 40 minutes after being administered two doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Pike was scheduled to be executed for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a crime she committed at the age of 18. Her lawyers had raised concerns about the execution protocol, citing issues such as difficult vein access, blown veins, and degraded pentobarbital.

The US Supreme Court had cleared the way for the execution to proceed, overturning a temporary stay granted by the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Pike's lawyers have stated that she is being treated at a nearby hospital, but her condition is unknown, according to Gulf News.

Brief written by urgent.news from Gulf News, Punch Nigeria, IOL, New Straits Times, South China Morning Post — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.