Not-so-lethal injection
The attempted (and failed) execution of Christa Pike is grisly and extremely disturbing on almost every level. It starts with the 1995 murder itself, segues into the long delay before carrying out the sentence, and then the failure of the lethal injections to work.
Something is very rotten in the state of Tennessee:
Christa Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, her lawyers said, a day after a failed attempt to execute her pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.
“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now.”
The failed execution, which one death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Republican Gov. Bill Lee to order a review, calling what happened “deeply disturbing” and indefinitely postponing Pike’s execution and another one that had been scheduled for this year. It also reignited the debate over the state’s execution procedures, including its single-drug lethal injections.
A horror show.
How stupid and awful. My limited understanding is that the classic lethal injection uses two drugs or compounds. The first is a major tranquilizer/sedative type, so that if the second lethal one would have caused pain by itself, it won’t. Why insist on a single compound?
I may be wrong, but I think she should be released from confinement. Someone Upstairs seems to be looking out for her.
I have mixed feelings on the death penalty itself. But IMO if we’re going to do it, then a bullet in the head would be cheaper, quicker, and a lot more certain than the methods currently in use.
Of course opponents of the death penalty probably don’t regard those things as desirable.
Death penalty opponents have done everything possible to make it difficult or impossible to execute a person efficiently and effectively, then use disasters like this to demonstrate that it’s not a good thing to do.
2 things are needed to execute a person:
1. a good IV.
2. drug or drugs.
With modern technology found in any medium sized ER, inability to start an IV occurs maybe 1 in 1000 cases.
Pentobarbital in adequate dose will kill a person 100% of the time, but it will take many minutes to hours for electrical activity in the heart, as detected on an ordinary EKG, to cease. To do the deed quickly, use the PB to render the person unconscious and no longer breathing, then give KCl to stop the heart. KCl hurts a lot, but not the unconscious person.
Is it true that the execution team was all female? Maybe sabotage? Unlikely, but no more unlikely than being unable to kill a person with ordinary medical and nursing skills.
Pike requested, and was granted, an all-female execution team. They were new to the protocol and obviously did a poor job.
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2026/10/01/christa-pike-granted-all-female-execution-team-botched-lethal-injection/
I favor facing the fact that an execution is killing a human being who has been judged with due process in courts of law to be guilty of a heinous crime. Hanging and firing squads work well and are fast.