Breaking: US woman still alive after lethal injection dose, legal team says

A woman on death row in the US state of Tennessee is still alive after two doses of lethal injection, according to her lawyers.Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed at a maximum security prison in Nashville at 10am on September 30, local time.Her execution was delayed after a last-minute stay, with the Supreme Court ultimately clearing the way for it to go ahead a few hours later.Her legal team has now said she is still alive more than an hour after the execution drug was administered.Witnesses have been released from the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where the execution was held.Emergency service teams have been seen outside the prison and reportedly left the area with lights and sirens blaring.Speaking to media, multiple witnesses from the execution chamber said "nothing we saw was normal".They noted the process was "abnormally long", with the curtain being drawn at multiple points throughout the lethal injection being administered.Associated Press journalist Kim Chandler said she had witnessed many executions, but never one in Tennessee."I would say that Pike appeared noticeably awake as the execution began," she told media outside the prison."The blinds were closed for the first time to the execution chamber at 7:46pm, they opened again at 7:49pm."Her mouth fell open a few times and she began to loudly snore. She gasped a few times."The curtain to the execution chamber closed for the final time at 8:06pm and she could be heard loudly snoring, clearly very alive, in the chamber until media witnesses were told to leave the area at about 8:53pm."Prison officials have yet to speak and no time of death has been confirmed.Pike's lawyers call for emergency stay of executionPike's attorney's have filed an emergency petition to halt and stay the execution.Court documents alleged Pike was administered two syringes of the execution drug pentobarbital, but was still alive."Ms Pike has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring," they wrote.Her attorneys spoke to local media, saying she needed "immediate medical care".Prior to her execution, Pike said in a letter to NBC she was not afraid to die."I'm only nervous about the process," she wrote.In one of her final requests, she asked for an all-female execution team.Her lifelong history of sexual abuse and violence, according to court documents, left her terrified at the idea of being held down by men in her final moments.Tennessee's history of executionsThis is not the first time this year Tennessee has seen a botched execution attempt.In May, death row inmate Tony Carruthers was given a one-year reprieve after the execution team failed to establish an intravenous (IV) line.The team said they were unable to complete a back-up IV line or a central line, even after more than an hour of attempts.According to Carruthers's legal team, the execution team punctured him more than a dozen times while trying to establish the IV line.Lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre, has the highest rate of being botched.In a 2022 annual review, the organisation found 35 per cent of the 20 execution attempts that year were "visibly problematic".