Christa Pike, Who Was Given The Death Penalty For The Murder Of Her Classmate, Was Alive And Snoring After Receiving 2 Lethal Injections In A Botched Execution

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

Case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.

Victim’s mother says she is waiting for death sentence

Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told the Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the US this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

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This story has been updated to correct that Pike had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. local time, not 11 a.m., and that the lawyers filed an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court, not US.

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Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.

This article appeared on HuffPost.