Tennessee fails to execute first woman in 200 years

Tennessee failed to carry out the execution of 50-year-old Christa Pike, convicted of the murder of a classmate. The woman was given two lethal injections but remained conscious. The defendant was hospitalized, her lawyers said.

The defense cited “difficulties with access to veins” as one of the reasons for the failed execution attempt. Details about Pike's condition are not given. “Unsuitable pentobarbital, the lack of emergency medical care in situations where complications inevitably arise, and all this is within the framework of the protocol, which is still shrouded in secrecy,” the lawyers said in a statement.

Pike was to be the first execution in Tennessee in 200 years. It was planned to be held on September 30, but an hour before the procedure, a federal court in Tennessee ruled to postpone it. The suspension was related to a request by lawyers to consider the convict's claims that she was sexually abused as a child and suffered from PTSD. On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the postponement of execution.

Krista Pike committed the crime at age 18 when she and her boyfriend, then 17, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. In 1996, she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. She is the youngest woman sentenced to death in modern American history.

About how the death penalty tried to make humane, read in the material “Kommersant” “Inhuman factor”.