Tennessee officials were unable to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, after her lethal injection was stopped for several hours while courts considered a last-minute appeal.
Pike had been sentenced to death for a murder committed in 1995. Had the execution gone ahead, it would have been the first time Tennessee put a woman to death in at least two centuries, the newspaper reported, citing what would have been the state's first such execution in that period.
Media witnesses described an unusual scene, with one saying: "Haven't seen anything like it."
