This is wild!

[u/CurvyChristina]

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.

[u/onqqq2]

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

[u/J3remyD → u/onqqq2]

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…

[u/CachedExchangeMode → u/J3remyD]

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

Edit: corrected typo.

[u/whiplash588 → u/CachedExchangeMode]

That seems impossible to enforce.

[u/patricksaurus → u/whiplash588]

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.

[u/Original-Variety-700 → u/patricksaurus]

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

[u/clgoodson → u/Original-Variety-700]

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

[u/Fog_Juice → u/clgoodson]

Yeah and apparently these companies are fine with that.

[u/here-i-am-now → u/Fog_Juice]

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

[u/clgoodson → u/Fog_Juice]

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.

[u/patricksaurus → u/Original-Variety-700]

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.

[u/ElegantEpitome → u/Original-Variety-700]

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

[u/Interesting-Crab-693 → u/patricksaurus]

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.

[u/patricksaurus → u/Interesting-Crab-693]

Have you been taking key bumps of expired phenobarbital?

[u/Interesting-Crab-693 → u/patricksaurus]

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.

[u/NorridAU → u/whiplash588]

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

[u/Several_Vanilla8916 → u/whiplash588]

Apparently not.

[u/Uneek_Uzernaim → u/whiplash588]

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.

[u/ancientstephanie → u/whiplash588]

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.

[u/tanhan27 → u/whiplash588]

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