Tennessee halts executions after woman survives two doses of lethal injection drug

Pike, 50, was taken to a hospital after the failed execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday. Her attorneys said she had lost consciousness but still had a heartbeat and could be heard loudly snoring.

Media witnesses reported that Pike received a second dose of pentobarbital by 8:26 p.m. She could still be heard snoring behind a closed curtain until the microphone in the execution chamber was turned off at 8:53 p.m. and reporters were escorted out.

Tennessee's execution protocol provides for a second set of drug syringes if a prisoner does not die after the first. It does not specify what should happen if the prisoner remains alive after the second.

Gov. Bill Lee ordered what he called a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and said the state's remaining execution scheduled for this year would not go ahead.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said staff had followed every step of the state's execution protocol.

Pike had been sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, committed when Pike was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Her execution went ahead after a last-minute legal battle. A federal appeals court granted a stay about an hour before the scheduled execution, but the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned it.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described the failed execution as “singular and unparalleled,” saying other prisoners had survived execution attempts after officials failed to establish intravenous access, but none was known to have remained alive after the execution drugs were administered.