Christa Pike remained alive after two lethal injections were administered during her scheduled execution in Tennessee, her lawyers said in a federal court filing.
At around 8.26pm local time, the filing stated that “executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring”.
Her lawyers also said Pike had not lost consciousness and still had a heartbeat, while the curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice”.
The execution had been due to take place on Wednesday after the US Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stay imposed by a federal appeals court, allowing Tennessee officials to proceed.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had temporarily blocked the lethal injection only hours before it was scheduled. The Supreme Court later lifted that order.
Pike’s attorneys had argued against the execution, saying jurors who sentenced her to death had not been shown the full extent of her childhood sexual abuse, trauma and mental-health history.
She was convicted of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville, in 1995. Pike was 18 when Slemmer was killed.
