Nashville, Oct. 1 -- Twin attempts by a US state to execute death-row inmate Christa Pike ended without her death after officials administered two doses of pentobarbital before taking her to hospital for emergency treatment.
Pike, 50, had been due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years. She was convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, a killing that drew national attention because a pentagram was carved into the victim's body.
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, attacked Slemmer after luring her into a wooded area in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her, while Shipp admitted carving the pentagram into her body...