Christa Pike: What to know about the case of Tennessee death row inmate
www.nbcnews.com
Christa Pike, 50, was 18 when she murdered classmate Colleen Slemmer. She was due to be the first woman the state had executed in more than 200 years.

The lone woman on Tennessee’s death row was still alive after she was administered two lethal injections, her lawyer said in a motion seeking to halt her execution Wednesday night, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.

At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said “executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals” and Christa Pike was “still alive and snoring,” her lawyers said in a federal court filing.

They said Pike “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat” and that curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice.”

  • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
    221·
    3 days ago

    She has a condition that causes blood clotting, some kind of thrombosis. Her lawyers told the courts that it could cause the injections to fail.

    Other commenter is also correct. She was raped multiple times, and asked for a hanging instead of an injection because 1, she believes a botched hanging would be less awful a way to die than a botched lethal injection, and 2, because being strapped to a gurney (effectively tied to a bed) and surrounded by men and watched by strangers would be incredibly psychologically painful to her. The woman declined a last meal before they did this, id imagine she was too distraught to eat.