Christa Pike has survived an attempt by Tennessee to execute her by lethal injection, hours after the United States Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stay and allowed the state’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years to proceed.

The 50-year-old remained alive after officials administered both injections permitted under Tennessee’s execution protocol at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night.

Witnesses reported hearing loud breathing, gasping and snoring after the injections were administered. Pike was subsequently transported to an off-site medical facility. Her condition was not immediately disclosed.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials had followed every step of the state’s approved execution protocol. It acknowledged that the procedure did not permit further action after the authorised injections had been administered.

Governor Bill Lee, who rejected Pike’s clemency application earlier in the week, subsequently suspended Tennessee’s remaining executions for 2026 and ordered an independent review of the failed procedure.

The attempt followed an extraordinary series of legal interventions. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a temporary stay on Wednesday morning to consider whether Pike could reopen proceedings over evidence concerning her childhood abuse and mental health.

Tennessee immediately approached the Supreme Court, which vacated the stay without providing a detailed explanation. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Sotomayor said the lower court had sought only a short delay to examine Pike’s claim and argued that the Supreme Court’s intervention prevented it from completing that review. Tennessee maintained that Pike’s lawyers were using last-minute proceedings to delay a sentence imposed three decades earlier.

Pike was sentenced to death for the January 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Both women were attending a Job Corps training programme in Knoxville.

Prosecutors said Pike, then 18, believed Slemmer was attempting to interfere in her relationship with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Pike, Shipp and another teenager lured Slemmer to an isolated area, where she was beaten and stabbed. Pike and Shipp were convicted of first-degree murder.

Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only participant sentenced to death.

Pike has not denied responsibility for the killing. Her lawyers, however, argued that the sentencing jury was not given a complete account of her childhood, which they described as marked by severe sexual abuse, neglect and violence. They also cited diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Slemmer’s mother supported the execution and said her family had waited more than 30 years for the sentence to be carried out.

Executions of women remain rare in the United States. Only 18 women have been put to death since capital punishment resumed in 1976, accounting for approximately one per cent of executions. Tennessee’s last known execution of a woman occurred more than two centuries ago, although incomplete historical records make the exact date uncertain.

The failed procedure leaves Pike’s legal status unresolved. Tennessee would require a new execution date before making another attempt, while her lawyers are expected to argue that subjecting her to a second execution would violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.