The lone woman on Tennessee’s death row was still alive after she was administered two lethal injections, her lawyer said in a motion seeking to halt her execution Wednesday night, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.
\n\nAt 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said “executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring,” her lawyers said in a federal court filing.
\n\nThey said Pike “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat,” and that curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice.”
\n\nThe office of Gov. Bill Lee and the state attorney general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
\n\nPike’s execution began after the Supreme Court vacated a lower court’s Wednesday morning order that had temporarily blocked the move.
\n\nThe high court’s decision hours later capped a flurry of last-minute legal maneuvering in a bid by Pike’s defense team to spare her life. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
\n\nAbout an hour before her scheduled execution at 10 a.m. local time in Nashville, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District…
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