Tennessee fails to execute Christa Pike after 2 doses of lethal drug

Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Pike to death on Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure.

Pike was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and was taken by ambulance from the prison, her lawyers said.

“We have not been informed as to her condition,” Pike’s lawyers said in a statement.

Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution at 11am on Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the US Supreme Court overturned that stay.