Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived an attempted lethal injection on Wednesday, prompting the governor to suspend executions for the rest of the year and order an independent review.
Pike, 50, was taken to an off-site medical facility following the failed procedure at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Her condition was not immediately known.
The attempt marked Tennessee’s first effort to execute a woman in more than 200 years and the second failed execution in the state this year.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials followed the state’s approved execution protocol.
“The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office,” the agency said.
It added that the lethal injection chemical used under the protocol had “consistently been effective” and that no additional procedures were permitted after those carried out on Wednesday.
Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion in federal court during the execution process seeking to stop it. According to NBC News, they cited witnesses as saying that both syringes of lethal injection chemicals had been administered but Pike remained alive.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who had rejected Pike’s clemency petition on Monday, suspended all executions in the state for the remainder of the year following the failed attempt.
Lee also called for a “comprehensive, third-party review” of the execution attempt, according to the Nashville Tennessean.
In May, prison officials abandoned another execution attempt after they were unable to find a suitable vein for a male prisoner’s lethal injection.
Wednesday’s attempt came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a last-minute lower-court stay, allowing the execution to proceed.
Pike was sentenced to death for her role in the 1995 torture and killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
Pike was 18 when she, her then 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and another companion lured Slemmer, their classmate at a Job Corps vocational centre, into a wooded area.
Pike and Shipp later confessed to the killing and were convicted of first-degree murder.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has publicly supported Pike’s execution.
Journalists who witnessed the procedure reported hearing Pike snoring, gasping and breathing heavily. They also said she complained of discomfort in her arm.
At certain points, a curtain separating witnesses from the execution chamber was closed, leaving journalists able to hear but not see what was happening.
Clergy were called into the chamber twice, witnesses said. An ambulance was later seen arriving at the prison before leaving.
Pike’s lawyers had urged Governor Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without parole.
In a 226-page clemency petition, they documented what they described as a childhood marked by violence, neglect and sexual abuse. They also cited diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder that Pike received while in prison.
Her lawyers argued that these circumstances, along with Pike’s age at the time of the murder, should be considered in deciding whether she should be executed.
Pike was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder in 2001 following an assault on another prison inmate, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Executions of female prisoners remain extremely uncommon in the United States.
Women account for 18 of the 1,683 people executed since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Before Wednesday’s failed attempt, Tennessee had executed 17 people since capital punishment resumed in the U.S. in 1976.
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