Woman in hospital after surviving two lethal injections in failed Tennessee execution

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A Tennessee woman convicted of murder survived two lethal injection doses and was hospitalised on Thursday, her lawyers said, marking the state’s second failed execution in months and prompting it to halt capital punishment this year.

Hours earlier on Wednesday the Supreme Court cleared the way for Christa Pike, 50, to become the first woman to be executed in the southern US state of Tennessee in 200 years — but the attempt failed.

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the New York Times. “There is no precedent.”