Tennessee woman Christa Pike was in a hospital Thursday after authorities “failed” to carry out her execution, her lawyers said, with witnesses reporting the convicted murderer was breathing despite the injections intended to kill her.
The execution procedure went ahead hours after the US Supreme Court ruled that it could proceed, with liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissenting. Just hours earlier the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Pike to be the first woman to die by lethal injection in the southern US state of Tennessee in 200 years.
“The Court’s decision… unnecessarily prevents that [lower] court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim,” the dissenting justices wrote. “Worse, the Court grants such extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts.”
The US Supreme Court had rejected Tuesday an application for a stay of execution, which argued that Pike’s history as a victim of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood condition meant a lethal injection would cause “needless suffering.
Independent UN rights experts have urged the US government and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her death sentence.
