The scheduled execution of Christa Pike in the U.S. state of Tennessee on Wednesday, September 30, failed, according to her lawyers and witnesses. Pike, who was to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries, received a lethal injection but reportedly continued to breathe and snore after the procedure. Her lawyers stated that the execution encountered "difficulty accessing veins, ruptured veins, degraded pentobarbital, and absence of emergency medical care." Pike is now receiving medical treatment in a hospital. The U.S. Supreme Court had authorized the execution a few hours earlier, overturning a stay granted by a federal appeals court that had initially postponed the execution. The appeals court had wanted time to consider a defense appeal related to Pike's history of childhood sexual violence, which the state of Tennessee acknowledged for the first time during a hearing in August. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995. Her two accomplices, who were also teenagers at the time, escaped the death penalty. Pike's lawyers argued that mitigating circumstances, including her history of trauma and mental health issues, were not adequately considered during her trial. The last execution of a woman in the United States was that of Amber McLaughlin in Missouri in 2023, who was also the first transgender woman to be executed in the country. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the United States, representing barely more than 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). The execution of Pike was to be the 30th execution in the United States this year, with 16 of those occurring in Florida alone. According to some reports, this was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. The incident has prompted calls for an investigation, with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announcing an inquiry and postponing the state's next scheduled execution. Pike's lawyers noted that the execution attempt "quickly went wrong," leaving her in a state of "unnecessary agony." They filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court of Tennessee, requesting an immediate halt to the procedure, citing the prolonged duration of the execution attempt and the additional suffering it caused. In the United States, failed executions are not uncommon, with more than 3% of recorded executions between 1890 and 2010 having failed. Lethal injection has the highest failure rate (7.2%) among execution methods, followed by gas (5.4%) and hanging (3.12%). Notable cases include that of Romell Broom, whose lethal injection execution in Ohio failed in 2009, leading to a prolonged legal battle before his death from COVID-19 in 2020. Despite the failed execution, Pike's death sentence remains legally valid. Tennessee could potentially use electrocution as an alternative method if a second lethal injection attempt is deemed unconstitutional. However, no pardons have been granted based on the failure of a first execution attempt since 1976.