US death row inmate Christa Pike conscious and speaking after failed execution, lawyers say

There were seven other cases where prisoners survived slated executions, but in those cases, executioners were not able to inject anything into the inmates' veins, Denno told the BBC. Pike "is the only person for whom some kind of toxin has been injected," she said."They did everything they were supposed to do as part of the execution process, and it simply didn't work," Denno said. "This has never happened before."Authorities have not yet said whether they will try again to execute Pike. They have also not offered an explanation for what went wrong. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the rest of the year - and the head of prisons in the state said over the weekend that he plans to resign.Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens.Dr Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist advising Pike's defence team, said the two doses of Pentobarbital she received last week would have been enough that, had it entered her bloodstream in normal circulation, "she would have surely died".Instead, Zivot said a possible explanation is that instead of entering Pike's bloodstream, the Pentobarbital was more likely to have spread across the tissue under her skin.