Tennessee woman still alive after attempts to execute her, lawyers say

Christa Pike, a 50-year-old woman from Tennessee, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection for murdering a schoolmate in 1995 when she was 18 years old. According to The Hill, lawyers for Pike said she was still alive after being administered two syringes of lethal injection drugs, specifically pentobarbital, at 8:26 p.m. local time.

Pike's case had been the subject of dramatic legal wrangling, with a temporary court-ordered pause being granted and then lifted by the US Supreme Court, which ruled that Tennessee could proceed with the execution. The Supreme Court's decision, made by a 6-3 conservative majority, marked the final word on whether the execution was permitted.

Pike's lawyers had argued that evidence of her childhood sexual abuse was not adequately considered during her sentencing, but her clemency petition was denied by Governor Bill Lee. The Tennessee Department of Correction had planned to move forward with the execution, which would have been the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in 200 years and the first in the state for a crime committed as a teenager in the modern era of US capital punishment.

Brief written by urgent.news from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Daily Maverick, The Hill, Le Monde English — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.