wo syringes of pentobarbital went in, and Christa Pike was still breathing. Her lawyers said she never lost consciousness Wednesday night, that she still had a heartbeat and was audibly snoring, before Tennessee officials suspended the execution and sent her to a hospital. They said late that night that they didn't know her condition. State officials confirmed to a federal judge she was receiving medical care. It was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year. In May, the state called off a planned execution after medical staff couldn't place a required backup IV and an attempt at a central line failed. Pike's lawyers had warned the procedure could be torturous because she has small veins, a history of sexual trauma and other medical conditions. "We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy," they said afterward. The Tennessee Department of Correction said it "had followed every step of the state's lawful, established execution protocol" and that the chemical "has consistently been effective." Reporters who witnessed the attempt described Pike as somewhat alert, at one point singing with her spiritual adviser. Curtains were closed for nearly an hour, they said, and they could still hear steady snoring. Pike, 50, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the state to proceed just hours earlier, over the dissent of its three liberal justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "Tennessee's desire to expedite Pike's execution by a few days or even weeks cannot outweigh" Pike's "fundamental interest in [her] own life." In January 1995, Pike, then 18, lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into the woods on the University of Tennessee campus with her boyfriend and a friend. They beat Slemmer with asphalt rocks and slashed her with a box cutter. Pike took a piece of Slemmer's skull. Slemmer's family raised funds to drive to Nashville to witness the execution