NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted the state’s remaining scheduled execution for 2026 and ordered an independent review after prison officials failed to kill Christa Gail Pike during a lethal injection Wednesday night. Pike, 50, was taken by ambulance from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to a hospital after officials administered two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings. Her lawyers said she was alive and loudly snoring after the attempt; her condition was not immediately known. Lee said the review would determine “exactly what occurred.” He said the state has a serious duty to carry out sentences lawfully and constitutionally, and that Tennesseans expect the process to be effective. The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials followed the state’s established execution protocol. That protocol calls for a second set of drug syringes if a person is not dead after the first. It does not specify what staff should do if the person remains alive after the second dose. Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the episode unprecedented. She said at least seven people have survived complications when execution teams could not establish an IV, but she knew of no one who had survived after receiving the drugs used in an execution. Witnesses said Pike was strapped to a gurney when the chamber curtains opened at 7:27 p.m. She gave final remarks saying she was at peace, then remained awake and asked staff whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. Witnesses reported that the second dose had been given by 8:26 p.m. They continued to hear her snoring before the microphone was cut off and they were escorted out. Pike’s execution had been scheduled for Wednesday morning. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked it about an hour before it was due to begin, saying it needed to consider whether her claims of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately addressed at sentencing. Tennessee’s attorney general appealed, and the U.S. Supreme Court later cleared the way for the execution. The court’s conservative majority did not explain its order; three liberal justices dissented, saying Pike’s claims warranted closer review. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Knoxville job-training facility. Prosecutors said Pike, then 18, lured Slemmer to a wooded area and attacked her with a box cutter and a piece of asphalt. Pike’s boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. He admitted carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s body. The case has also drawn renewed attention to the sentencing of young people and people with mental illness. Pike’s supporters cited her age at the time of the killing, diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, and her account of severe abuse. Pike did not deny responsibility for Slemmer’s death. In a clemency statement, she described herself as a mentally ill 18-year-old who took years to grasp the gravity of what she had done. The failed attempt was Tennessee’s second execution setback this year. In May, officials called off Tony Carruthers’ lethal injection after executioners spent more than an hour trying unsuccessfully to place an IV. The state changed to single-drug pentobarbital executions in 2024, after previously acknowledging problems with testing its lethal-injection drugs. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Nationally, women have accounted for about 1% of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had traveled to Nashville hoping to witness the execution; she could not be reached for comment after it was halted.