Tennessee Death Row Inmate Heard ‘Snoring’ After Surviving Two Lethal Injections

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived two rounds of lethal injection Wednesday in an apparent botched execution and was rushed to a hospital as her attorneys filed emergency litigation to stop the state from trying again.

“This execution is causing Ms. Pike unnecessary agony and occurring in violation of her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment,” her attorneys wrote in an emergency filing, according to USA Today.

According to local media reports, Pike received two doses of the lethal injection chemicals but remained alive. Witnesses reported that she was still breathing and audibly snoring after the injections. Her legal team filed emergency litigation with the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking intervention.

As of Wednesday evening, Pike was en route to a hospital after reporting pain, local media reported. “It went very poorly,” one witness said.

A divided 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed with Pike’s execution, lifting a last-minute stay issued by a federal appeals court less than two hours before she was scheduled to die. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Pike, who was convicted of torturing and murdering a classmate, was set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years. After the justices gave the all-clear, prison officials moved to execute the inmate before the midnight deadline.

Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps Center. Pike lured Slemmer into the woods with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, where she attacked her with a meat cleaver and a piece of asphalt before cutting her throat, according to court documents. Pike and Shipp then carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s forehead and chest. Pike later kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a trophy and bragged about the killing to friends.

A jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder in 1996, when she was 18. She has spent the past three decades on Tennessee’s death row. In 2001, while incarcerated, Pike nearly strangled fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoelace, resulting in a separate conviction for attempted first-degree murder.

This is a developing story.

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