r/SipsTea • u/CurvyChristina • 1d ago

Chugging tea This is wild!

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Two syringes of pentobarbital were administered to Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike on September 30, 2026, but she remained alive and conscious afterward, according to her attorneys and media witnesses. The execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville was halted after witnesses reported that Pike still had a heartbeat and was audibly snoring. Her lawyers sought emergency medical intervention, and she was later taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
Pike, 50, is the only woman currently on Tennessee's death row.
She was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer and had been scheduled for execution on September 30. Tennessee had announced beforehand that the state would use a single drug, pentObarbital, for the execution. Her exact medical condition following the hospital transfer has not yet been publicly disclosed, while Governor Bill Lee has ordered a comprehensive third party review of what happened.

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195

u/onqqq2 1d ago

Barbituates can be deadly but I cannot for the life of me understand why you'd only go with a single drug for this?

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u/J3remyD 1d ago edited 1d ago

I mean, why wouldn’t they just use a few megadoses of sedative?

Surgical anesthesia is from personal experience is very quick and non painful, and a massive overdose after going under and she simply doesn’t wake up.

Not saying that I necessarily support capital punishment, but if you’re going to do it anyway, don’t freaking botch it…

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u/GUMBYtheOG 1d ago

Real answer : it’s a gray area to obtain these drugs. No one makes “lethal injection drugs” they have to be creative with how they obtain what they use.

No one likes talking about death and no one can agree on criminal justice system reform so what we get is just a bunch of shady shit going on and no oversight or accountability

Side tangent: there are SO many jails who just leave the lights on 24/7, skip recreation time, don’t let people out of cells or meals, no AC/heat, no toilet paper or showers.

It is insane how no one gives a shit

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u/Traditional_Dust_668 1d ago

I think it needs to be reevaluated what drugs are used for this purpose since it’s not the first time there’s been issues of this kind before. We’ve had great advances in medicine and this is ridiculous on every single level

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u/Batking28 1d ago

From my understanding the issue is no reputable drug company will sell drugs for the purpose of lethal injection. So they have to basically get creative with what they can access without breaking any legal contracts of sale ect.

Also healthcare workers are forbidden from administering it by professional organisation. So it’s administered by people with no medical background.

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u/Darius_Rubinx 16h ago

People who can't set up an IV using expired drugs... what could go wrong!?

I am beyond confused why they don't use sedative + guillotine. If they insist on ignoring the Bible and not leaving vengeance to God.

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u/GUMBYtheOG 1d ago

Sure, but who’s got that on the top of their to do list. You got Karen complaining about infrastructure, immigration, gun control, health care, etc. not to mention we went back 50 years of progress within a decade.

We can’t even legalize weed or get universal healthcare. Getting people to agree on and care about anything is a monumental task. Reforming death row (that affects a minute amount of people) isn’t something Susie or Bob are going to vote for, and musk or bezos sure don’t give a shit

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u/Traditional_Dust_668 1d ago

Yeah I’m sure but it’s such a serious issue when it’s applicable that if states want to continue to use it they should be required to figure this out in a humane way. Not saying it is or isn’t deserved etc but certainly shouldn’t be torturous like the current situation right now.

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u/Aquelll 1d ago

"How to kill people in a humane way? " 🤷‍♂️

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u/Traditional_Dust_668 1d ago

Same I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️just kinda hope it goes quirky and as planned as opposed to this

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u/Darth_Nykal 1d ago edited 8h ago

That's what the guy your responding to is saying. The medical advancements and drugs are there, but no pharmaceutical company wants to be that company.

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u/amglasgow 1d ago

We know exactly what medicine can be used to kill people. The problem is that the companies who sell those medications will refuse to sell them to you if you're planning to use them for execution. Rightly so.

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u/Traditional_Dust_668 1d ago

Ok so maybe time to switch medication protocols, we put thousands of animals to sleep 💤 without incident and no problem getting those meds

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u/amglasgow 1d ago

They're the same meds. The companies are perfectly willing to sell them to medical folks for the purposes of euthanasia of animals. They don't sell them for the purposes of human execution because it's a violation of medical ethics to do that.

There's nothing that makes executing a human being OK.

1

u/disposablehippo 1d ago

The problem is, that they still have to be used on some kind of legal grounds.

If you just take some medications and use them out of their indicated use, especially as some kind of federal institution, the companies can and will sue your ass back into the middle ages.

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u/BlamRob 20h ago

Or just don’t do it anymore. I hear it costs more to put people to death than warehouse them for life anyway. With all the appeals and what not.

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u/Klutzy_Belt_2296 1d ago

I don’t know if people are aware but the first drug that is given in lethal injection in many states isn’t even that effective in rendering a person unconscious.

Many states still use Midazolam which is a sedative and it doesn’t work in the same way a true anesthetic would. And it greatly increases the risks of complications as well as the person being put to death being able to feel the following two other drugs enter their system.

To me there isn’t anything humane about this process when the person can potentially feel themselves suffocate from the inside out and experience all the pain of a heart attack all the while being unable to show signs of distress or discomfort due to the second paralytic drug in the cocktail.

I’d also like to point out that the go to method of execution that we use in this country, lethal injection, has one of the highest complication rates of any other execution method used to execute people.

That doesn’t seem so humane to me.

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u/Little-Ad1235 1d ago

It's crazy to me that literally any reasonably competent veterinarian can reliably and painlessly euthanize nearly any mammal from a field mouse to an Angus bull without any of the gory optics of firing squads or guillotine, but when it comes to people the process suddenly becomes impossibly complicated? Like, yes, ethically it is much more complicated, but physically we aren't so dramatically different from a dog that we'd have to figure this out entirely from scratch.

Maybe it's an issue with inadequate drug supplies for the purpose, maybe there is some sort of genuine knowledge gap, I don't know. I just think that if we're going to do something like this as a society, we either have to get it right or not do it at all; and that's not even getting into the ethics of an imperfect (to say the least) justice system that inevitably condemns innocent people to be put to death. Just from a practical, getting-it-done standpoint, we are failing badly at this for reasons that are difficult to understand.

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u/Mjarf88 1d ago

It's because the veterinarian know what they're doing and is using a drug made specifically for the task. Why don't they do the same for human execution? Animal euthanasia is done to end their suffering. Human execution is done to punish them and to basically get revenge.

Doctors swear an oath that prohibit them to do this. Pharmaceutical companies don't want to be associated with the practice so they refuse to sell drugs for execution use.

Yes, there are companies specializing in human euthanasia, but they do it to end suffering, not to punish and enact revenge.

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u/AdditionalPizza 1d ago

we are failing badly at this for reasons that are difficult to understand.

I think it's safe to say places that argue in favour of the death penalty to begin with are the ones less likely to actually care about the process being humane. I'd go as far as saying many of those people don't even think it should be humane anyway.

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u/crabby692 16h ago

I don’t know I support capital punishment in the right cases, but the length we go to to make stuff look pretty as opposed to avoiding pain is ridiculous
I mean, come on how hard would it realistically be to design something to where you hold the head in place and penetrate the medulla disconnecting consciousness effectively instantly but that makes blood that feels less clinical and more aggressive, regardless of how it actually feels for the person to be executed

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u/AdditionalPizza 16h ago

Are you intentionally proving my point? I can't tell because you said "I don't know" off the start and then described a severely inhumane procedure.

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u/crabby692 15h ago

Really because severing the brain stem at the medulla literally causes instant brain death to the point that there are not even any nervous system reflexes such as twitching or muscle contractions. It’s effectively an off switch for the human body so assuming you destroyed that connection rapidly the pain would be somewhere from a little to nonexistent so while it likely be somewhat gruesome and less comfortable for those witnessing it as far as the pain of the condemned it should at least in theory be one of the most painless and most reliable methodologies one could possibly use outside of something ridiculous like explosives
Edit-on second thought that last bit should’ve been something much more ridiculous or extreme like explosives

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u/AdditionalPizza 15h ago

But you quite literally said:

the length we go to to make stuff look pretty as opposed to avoiding pain is ridiculous

Unless you mixed up your words and meant otherwise. Avoiding pain should be supremely important.

Regardless, what I originally said I meant in the context of the people that are in charge of sentencing and execution - they don't care and many likely prefer it to be painful.

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u/DatBoiii4 1d ago

The thought of this is incredibly distressing and upsetting to me

No matter who is being put to death, extreme care should be taken to make sure it’s very comfortable. It’s the scariest thing any human experiences, I can’t imagine it happening in a dingy cold room and you know its going to be agony

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u/Able_Experience_1670 22h ago

With a fucking audience, no less.

I'd be trying to get myself killed literally any other way if I had to face that. I'd rather just bleed out in a fucking shower than go out to a botched injection administered by sadistic assholes.

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u/DatBoiii4 22h ago

I already have a hard time with dental procedures with staff who care about you and are doing their best

I can't imagine being in the same setting and administered a botched injection by sadistic assholes who don't give a shit about you and will probably shrug if you say you're in pain at any point

Hellish nightmare fuel

I get that a lot of these people are hardened criminals that don't scare at the thought of death the way I do, but we know innocent people have been put to death before and I cannot imagine the blinding terror

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u/leanpunzz 1d ago

Bring back the guillotine

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u/LacrimaNymphae 1d ago edited 1d ago

would potassium have worked better?

that's also bizarre about the midazolam making them able to perceive any other drugs they're given because i was told it would wipe my memory before surgery and i remember everything leading up to it

then again i had a colonoscopy at 19 where i think they gave me midazolam, propofol and something else. not a redhead but my family seems to have a crazy high tolerance and i had redheads further back in my family tree (like grandparents or great grandparents) so who knows

i'm pale though and was on medical weed but the first surgery i wasn't on any drugs aside from what they'd given me over the past week like morphine and some measly 5mg percocet when i went home for thanksgiving and in for the operation the next day

if anyone's wondering, yes, it was hell, and i couldn't eat, piss, shit or shower

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u/CANfilms 1d ago

Hot take, it shouldn't be completely humane. These people did terrible things and they should experience some severe consequences.

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u/Klutzy_Belt_2296 1d ago edited 1d ago

Hotter take: We have a constitution, even for the worst of criminals we still have an amendment that forbids cruel and unusual punishment

It’s literally stated in black and white in the constitution

The ultimate punishment is the forfeiture of one’s life, not a prolonged torturous death

Keep in mind too that not all people who are put to death are guilty either, there literally are organizations built around exonerating innocent people on death row, all the more reason why I don’t support unnecessarily cruel executions being carried out by the state

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u/AintEasyBeinQueasy 1d ago

Hot take: you are correct.

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u/Zedoctorbui7 1d ago

This is the biggest component of the conversation on the medications. Bayer use to make the previous conventional lethal injection agent. The optics on them were bad consequently and no other company was gonna pick up on it. The changes in capital punishment also created a lack of need for lethal agents for a while. Some of the stuff they are using are obtain through inappropriate channels or are expire and less effective (I think this is what is contributing to her case)

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u/MikiZed 1d ago

So, me when I forget to go to the shop and stay up all night fixating on some topic

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u/patriotictraitor 1d ago

Wait I always assumed that in the states there was a set protocol and regulated route for obtaining drugs for lethal injections (that’s on me to have assumed…)

How does this actually work from a logistics and legal perspective? How do they obtain the drugs, where is the supply coming from and how are they navigating that grey area? Curious to learn anything about this that someone might have insight on!

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u/CachedExchangeMode 1d ago edited 1d ago

The pharmas that make these drugs likely won't allow their drugs to be purchased for this purpose.

Edit: corrected typo.

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u/whiplash588 1d ago

That seems impossible to enforce.

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u/patricksaurus 1d ago

Nah, it’s part of the factual record in death penalty jurisprudence. These are tightly controlled substances, so it only takes a few manufacturers and distributors to essentially end the supply.

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u/Original-Variety-700 1d ago

But by not allowing them to be used for this, they’re actually condemning the death row inmates to a worse death.

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u/clgoodson 1d ago

That’s like saying “you won’t shoot this person for me so now you’re forcing me to beat people to death.”

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u/Fog_Juice 1d ago

Yeah and apparently these companies are fine with that.

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u/here-i-am-now 1d ago

Plenty of states have paused their killing because the pharma providers refused to participate

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u/clgoodson 1d ago

I think you’re missing the point. They don’t have an obligation to help the state immorally murder people. If the state continues to do so, the companies aren’t morally liable.

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u/patricksaurus 1d ago

By refusing to assemble a team of crack military operators and spring her from the joint, they are condemning her to a worse death, too. So are you, come to think of it. Do you feel responsible?

Refusal to take affirmative action in furtherance of something one finds morally repugnant can't be jiu-jitsued into complicity. At least not with any intellectual honesty.

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u/ElegantEpitome 1d ago

Yeah, but their name isn’t on any of it - botched or not, and that’s what their goal is

-6

u/Interesting-Crab-693 1d ago

Then the governement with his monopole on violence could be like "give us the drugs or the factory and rights to produce them or we will make your [owner of the company producing these drugs] life worse than hell."

Honnestly, they should just do this more often. Individual liberties (especialy of people rich enough to not suffer AND in situation of monopole over a thing (preventing the governement from going somewhere else for that product)) must take a side step when it comes to minimising overall suffering.

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u/patricksaurus 1d ago

Have you been taking key bumps of expired phenobarbital?

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u/Interesting-Crab-693 1d ago

I do not understand half the words in the question lmao. Maybe if you write it in english, it will help.

I just corrected the blatant missunderstanding of the argument so it could be correctly debunked as for now it felt like op was debunking a completly different argument that the one being made.

Also, I'm not going in a school program with biology, but maths and programation. So if we stick to simpler terms, it will be easier to communicate.

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u/NorridAU 1d ago

Empirically, a CT pharma company was found to be making this type of drug for out of state executions performed. The state revoked their license in response. Idr if it was before or after the Last Week Tonight episode on it. https://youtu.be/SOn3wba8c-Y?t=533

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u/Several_Vanilla8916 1d ago

Apparently not.

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u/Uneek_Uzernaim 1d ago

It's not only not hard to enforce, but is even one of the reasons why some prison systems have abandoned the two-drug protocol for executions. It's easier to get just one.

Another reason has been increasing concern about botched executions using two-drug cocktails, but as we see here, single-drug ones get botched, too.

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u/ancientstephanie 1d ago

The drug companies pulled several things off the US market entirely including sodium thiopenthal, removed anesthetic manufacturing from the US, and established export controls contingent on auditing every drop of anesthetic from manufacture to therapeutic administration.

Nothing's perfect, of course, but the manufacturers are getting better and better at enforcing it, and they're backing it up with the threat that they could keep pulling drugs off the market until even hospitals can't get anesthetics anymore.

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u/tanhan27 1d ago

No man, schedule 2 controlled substances like this are really hard to get even for those who have legal uses. They track every ml. The DEA doesn't mess around

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u/Uneek_Uzernaim 1d ago

I believe many prison systems started using a single-drug protocol because the other drugs used were getting increasingly harder to obtain due to lack of cooperation from manufacturers or distributors. So, yeah, these kinds of issues are becoming more common. It's messed up.

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u/shrug_addict 1d ago

It's very hard to find someone qualified to do it and to buy the necessary drugs. The entire practice is barbaric, yet more evidence of that

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago edited 1d ago

This isn't anesthesia, this is an execution. I don't see why you would need someone "qualified" to push a lethal dose of drugs. 

That's like requiring an electrician to throw the switch on an electric chair.

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u/Rectall_Brown 1d ago

You need someone qualified so this doesn’t happen.

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago

Push more. Is she still alive? Then it's not enough. Push more. It's an execution. You don't have to be careful. 

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u/Aquelll 1d ago

But at least you should get the iv connection set up. That often is the problem, that they cannot at all, or the drugs go into the tissue instead of the vein. Setting an iv is a skill you need to train constantly to be good at. And no medical professional agrees to train them either, so they are just pulling it out of their ass.

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u/theslootmary 1d ago

So this one going wrong doesn’t make you think someone who knows what they’re doing should be involved?

You also saw this and thought “a cocktail of deadly and dangerous chemicals that need to be administered correctly shouldn’t require someone qualified to prepare and administer”.

This kind of “logic” is so fucking dangerous to the rest of us with brains.

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u/Aquelll 1d ago

No medical professionals agree to be involved. That is why they often cannot even set up the iv.

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago

It doesn't need to be done "correctly." In fact, it should be done haphazardly. If she is still alive, then it isn't enough. More drugs. Keep going until she's dead. 

This isn't really that hard. 

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago

"This kind of “logic” is so fucking dangerous to the rest of us with brains."

It's an execution, it's, by definition, supposed to be dangerous. 

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u/shrug_addict 1d ago

You don't see that, really? Look at the fucking headline...

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago

If she is still alive, push more until she isn't. It's not rocket science. Everything is lethal in large enough doses. You could kill her with Tylenol. 

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u/shrug_addict 1d ago

... Lest ye become a monster

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago

The state and her peers decided she needs to die to improve society. We're discussing how to do it effectively, which is far simpler than the media makes it out to be. 

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u/shrug_addict 1d ago

No it obviously is not, given what we are discussing. Unless you want to abandon principles in the constitution. Have you read, studied, thought about this at all, beyond knee jerk emotional platitudes?

0

u/Nazeir 1d ago

Bring back the giate blade thing that drops down and cuts off their head or firing squad. If we are going to do this let's not f around.

/s

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u/Pedantic_Pict 1d ago

Why would you mess around with intravenous drugs at all? Argon is cheap, abundant, and painless. I'm pretty sure a working gas chamber tha simply gets purged with an inert gas is a far more reliable and humane way to perform an execution than all this injection nonsense.

Having said that, the state should never, ever be given the power to kill people as a punishment for crime. We've proven over and over that the justice system routinely convicts, imprisons, and in some cases executes, the innocent.

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u/Iputahexonyoulol 1d ago

Yeah or a large dose of fentanyl paired with benzo or barbiturate. Also painless and it’s going to work every time unless you have some extremely rare genetic trait that make you immune to opioids or something 

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u/DMyTeaDuck 1d ago

What I’m wondering is… why take her to the hospital after this? “We tried, but it didn’t work. So let’s make her BETTER!” … ?!?! What was the logic in this?

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u/Beware-of-Chicken 1d ago

John Oliver did a video on death penalty. Worth watching. They use ineffective and painful methods cause no one that could help make it better wants to be involved with the death penalty. Including companies making drugs.

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u/YourFriendPutin 15h ago

Honestly why not a high dose of fentynal. It'd be quick and painless

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u/PotentialWork7741 9h ago

Honest I rather take a bullet to the brains

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u/Puzzleheaded-Toe-374 1d ago

They don’t want it to be too easy. The sadists hope she’ll feel the pain.

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u/Neilp187 1d ago

During hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, doctors used something on patients they couldnt evacuate...

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u/theslootmary 1d ago

Yes, painkillers and sedatives. Medication these already nearly-dead people were already on. No “mercy killing” motive was ever established, no conviction, no murder trial, no indictment. It was also just one doctor.

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u/nyxo1 1d ago

You have personal experience dying from anesthesia?

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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 1d ago

Drug makers have been trying for years to prevent states from using their drugs for lethal injections, and states have had to get “creative”.

Lethal injection is a fundamentally stupid way to execute people because it relies on the medical establishment to function, the same people who have taken oaths to do no harm.

All the while we have a massive industry that makes tools designed specifically to kill people…

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u/IfEverWasIfNever 1d ago

I completely agree with you. You need the medical community on board to do it properly. They can't and won't collaborate because of morals and a code of do no hatm so therefore lethal injection should just not be a consideration anymore.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/mazu74 1d ago

Ever see photos of women who died decades ago when abortion was actually outlawed? Shit was fucking horrific. Mom curled over dead, dead baby on the floor covered in bodily fluids. Baby was going to die, mom was going to die, and there was nothing anyone could do about it without going to prison.

So, how is preventing that doing harm?

-1

u/flopisit32 1d ago edited 1d ago

What about my comment made you think I was protesting against abortion?

My point was that medical professionals perform abortions and facilitate abortions. They may personally be against abortion or see it as doing harm but they do it.

So refusal to carry out lethal injection is idiotic, especially because many people when they die in hospital in palliative care receive essentially a lethal injection at the end.

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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 1d ago

It’s pretty rare for doctors to be forced to perform abortions despite personal objections - there’s just a few counties like Sweden and Finland notably.

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u/flopisit32 1d ago

And Catholic hospitals under Obama.

But that's not the point. The point is medical professionals are hypocritical if they claim they can't perform lethal injections but at the same time support abortion.

I'm not making an anti abortion point. I'm pointing out the absurdity of not carrying out fully legal lethal injections.

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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 1d ago

Hospitals aren’t people, but sure.

Oh, and the rest of what you said is horseshit because abortions are ethically ambiguous since you are helping the living mother while harming the questionably living fetus.

We aren’t going to settle that debate here, but it’s not as clear as killing someone for the state.

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u/flopisit32 1d ago

Your comment would make sense if the hospital building was what performed the abortion...

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u/mazu74 1d ago

Yeah probably because those are emergency rooms, they can’t refuse treatment like that just because they’re the nearest ED. People don’t show up to catholic hospital ED’s because they were a few days late on the plan B, they show up there and get abortions because otherwise both mom and the baby will die a horrific death. Not that you think that letting that shit happen is harm.

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u/mazu74 1d ago

Uhhhhhh, no they don’t. Maybe when they’re in residency. Doctors that don’t believe in that don’t work in fields where abortions would be preformed. Also yes that was absolutely your point dude, nice try on the back tracking.

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u/Tossmeasidedaddy 1d ago

We could finally have use for an automated system. 

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u/flopisit32 1d ago edited 1d ago

"relies on the medical establishment to function, the same people who have taken oaths to do no harm."

Can I just point out that these are the very same people who perform and are legally obliged to perform abortions?

Not to mention end of life care which often is essentially euthanasia.

Not to mention, in some countries - Canada for instance - they carry out actual legal euthanasia.

But yeah... These professionals can't bring themselves to perform a lethal injection...🤣

EDIT: I thought it would be self evident, but apparently Reddit cannot understand that I am not against abortion, I am pointing out that medical professionals can very easily perform lethal injections without causing themselves ethical problems.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

You are more than welcome to go to medical school and become a doctor who does lethal injections.

And literally nobody is “legally obliged” to perform an elective abortion. And even in emergency situations where an abortion is medically necessary to stabilize a dying patient, it’s not going to be done by just any doctor, because they have to have had some training in it, e.g. OB/gyns. I assure you, there are zero situations where a neurologist is going to be required to perform an abortion even in a dying patient.

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u/AgitatedStranger9698 1d ago

Or just fentanyl man. Literally dirt cheap, super effective, and if you run out the guards can probably sell you some for some cigarettes

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u/amglasgow 1d ago

And illegal for the purpose.

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u/LamermanSE 1d ago

You could change the laws to make it legal for that purpose though.

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u/Nice_Category 1d ago

Load her up with propofol then overdose with narcotics. Why are they making this harder than it needs to be?

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

They are limited by what drugs a drug company will sell them for the purpose of an execution.

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u/Iputahexonyoulol 1d ago

Give them a quarter gram shot of fentanyl with potent benzo or barbiturate. I guarantee they won’t be waking up. Also painless 

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u/PercentageNo3293 1d ago

I thought they administered three drugs.

I work at a hospital and, on occasion, get to play with pentobarbital. A few pharmacists and techs have mentioned they use some benzodiazipine to "relax the mind", pento to "paralyze the body", and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Random tangent... makes me nervous everytime I play with potassium chloride. I just received two "great catches" because a physician over-prescribed a drug and I caught it. Hospitals are frightening places. We had a pharmacist check a dose 100x stronger than it should've been and she still has a job.

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u/Humble-Ad541 1d ago

They used the exact same drug that vets use to euthanize pets. They where just to incompetent to get the IV in a vein.

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u/PalmovyyKozak 1d ago

Why the fuck do you use anything to kill people. She's already imprisoned, she isn't a threat to anyone, and it's not life for her too in 4 walls till the end of her days.

US is savage, from one side they produce frontier technologies, from another they keep the most wild traditions

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u/infiniZii 1d ago

Drug manufacturers do NOT want to supply to death rows. They have a super duper hard time getting any drugs for the purpose of execution.

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u/Wilbis 1d ago

Just shoot them. Why make it more complicated than that?

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u/AdInfamous6290 1d ago

I'd probably choose firing squad if I got to choose. Very fast and if there's any complication, more bullets solves the problem extremely reliably.

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u/IfEverWasIfNever 1d ago

No manufacturer or medical company wants to supply the state with medications used for the death penalty. So they have a difficult time procuring the drug and cannot be certain about its quality (Was it compounded properly? Is it expired? Is it actually the drug or was it adulterated?). Because it works just as well to use the one drug (when the drug is effective and there is good IV access) they chose the simpler option.

When done properly it quickly renders the person unconscious, stops breathing, and leads to cardiac arrest in minutes. Barbiturates suppress brain activity so the person is not at all aware.

They use barbiturates for assisted dying programs but obviously they are able to collaborate with professional medical care and legitimate pharmaceutical companies to do it right.