Tennessee unable to carry out woman's execution by lethal injection
Tennessee officials failed to execute death row inmate Christa Gail Pike after two doses of lethal drugs left her alive. Governor Bill Lee has halted all remaining executions for the year to conduct a third-party review of the state's protocol.
Why it matters
This incident highlights ongoing ethical and procedural controversies surrounding the death penalty and the reliability of lethal injection protocols in the United States.
<p>Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death Wednesday (Thursday NZT) for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee halted the remaining execution for the rest of the year.</p> <p>Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.</p> <p>She had been scheduled for execution at 10am Wednesday (4am Thursday NZT) for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
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14 other newsrooms covered this event. We read each version separately.
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