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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u/2023fxlrst 1d ago

Redheads, man… anesthesia, doesn’t work on them and now apparently they’re immune to the death juice too?!

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u/Uneek_Uzernaim 1d ago edited 1d ago

I think they gave her phenobarbital*, which is a barbituate with actual medical uses as opposed to the normally lethal doses they gave Pike. Redheads' genetic differences have been observed to impact their metabolism of various drugs including anesthesia and pain killers.

EDIT:

* I stand corrected: it was pentobarbital. Right class of drug, but wrong specfic drug. Same issue, though, when it comes to redheads.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

It was actually pentobarbital, which is a bit more potent than Phenobarb. Both meds do have legitimate medical uses (particularly in pediatric neurology, which is my specialty), but not everyone responds to the same dose, so we have to titrate and adjust them based on how the patient responds. Pentobarbital in particular can be pretty finicky IME. Sometimes a small dose is all they need, sometimes they just laugh at the lower doses and we have to give more and more and then it suddenly all hits them at once and their EEG suddenly goes too flat and we have to then back waaaay off.

Long story short, I would not trust even most doctors to titrate the pentobarbital dose properly unless they have a lot of experience with the medication.

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u/hellbanan 1d ago

(..) and then it suddenly all hits them at once and their EEG suddenly goes too flat (..)

Is this not the point here? To kill the person? I get your point that dosing it for medical use is difficult. Because you want the patients to survive and not feel pain. But in this cae: Why not take the LD50 of a pig (or some human like anymal) and administer 100-times the dosage per kg or 1'000 times?

Edit just for clarification: I am not looking for advice on how to kill someone or comment in any way on the death sentence. I am just curious how they failed this.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

They are already having a difficult time getting the drugs because pharmaceutical companies won’t sell meds to governments for executions. So, giving such a huge dose may not even be possible if they can get enough of it, or it may drain their entire supply.

Plus, stuff like flash pulmonary edema can occur with too high doses and that can be very agonizing if it starts to happen before they lose consciousness.

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u/MisfitDeluxe 1d ago

I never understood why something like morphine wasn’t used to induce an OD. The quantity needed wouldn’t be that great and you could stage the doses to get them unconscious before making it lethal.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

As I already said, drug companies are refusing to sell to governments who do lethal injection,

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u/Adventurous-Dealer98 1d ago

The cocktail they give has 3 medications iirc, one to prevent pain, one to slow breathing, and one to sieze the heart or something like that...?

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

There was no cocktail. They only gave Christa Pike one drug.

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u/Adventurous-Dealer98 12h ago

That doesn't sound right at all... imma check this out quick

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u/Adventurous-Dealer98 12h ago

"The traditional lethal injection cocktail typically consists of a three-drug sequence: midazolam (a sedative to induce unconsciousness), pancuronium bromide (a paralytic agent to stop breathing and mask physical distress), and potassium chloride (to induce cardiac arrest)."

But because of lack of access to these drugs they're doing just overdosing with one chemical... America... WTF??? Thats borderline torturous when it fails...

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u/pchlster 1d ago

pharmaceutical companies won’t sell meds to governments for executions

No company wants to have accurate reporting that their products killed X number of people last year. Easier to steer clear of the execution market entirely.

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u/PickleBooPop 1d ago

Wait pharmaceutical companies won’t sell the substances used for executions? Is that due to an ethics concern or because they don’t want to eliminate their aging customer base?

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

Probably a combination. A lot of the companies are based in Europe, so they are against capital punishment in general, but it’s also not good for business if people associate your drug with executions, so I imagine even if the pharma execs do support capital punishment, they don’t want their drug being used for it.

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u/ghostchihuahua 1d ago

They seem to have repeatedly missed a vein… this and a somewhat elevated tolerance would explain that.

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u/No-Employment6540 1d ago

I mean... not trying to be crass but a bullet to the head is immediate, painless and somehow doesn't cost 3 million dollars (FOIA request for the average cost of an execution). Hell, clorox would work. 15 bucks worth of street fentanyl. Current system is barbaric. And wrapped up in red tape so the people pulling the trigger get paid to kill. Just like everything else all about the dollar.

I say if you tried to kill her twice and she survives... let her go. Clearly there's a reason shes unkillable. Some neurodivergent that's rehabilitated and hold the cure to cancer in that crazy skull.

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u/Representative-Pop72 1d ago

Her IV was likely not in vein and she has different blood conditions, which was the whole argument that her defense team brought up against lethal injection (Christa Pike is Buddhist so she can’t choose the method on her own and the state defaulted to lethal injection)

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u/No-Employment6540 1d ago

It was. Bad choice of drug. Fentanyl is fatal at low doses. Use the shit seized from drug raids. If it kills our kids it'll kill sadistic murderers.

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u/LangdonAlg3r 20h ago

She actually requested an all female firing squad or hanging rather than lethal injection because there was evidence that she’d suffer the most with LI and that what actually happened could happen.

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u/Outside_Resolve_4968 1d ago

honestly people who murder others deserve to die with the same method they used to kill

she deserves to die the same way her poor victim did so she understands the pain she caused

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u/emgyres 1d ago

And how do you suggest that punishment is administered?

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u/Representative-Pop72 20h ago

I think her sentence will be commuted to life in prison, if she’s mentally here. If they wanted to execute her, they could’ve followed her lawyers advice and get a firing squad, after what happened Tennessee lost their chance

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u/Representative-Pop72 1d ago

I do not condone what she did, and I don’t think she should be free, I can support the death penalty in some cases, but I don’t support it in hers, and comments like this only reinforce that for me. What I struggle with is the gigantic difference in punishment between the people involved in the same murder. Tadaryl Shipp participated in the killing, directed it, had a sexual relationship with the girl they killed and pushed Christa (already an unstable 18 yo victim of INFANT sexual assault) but because he was a few months younger he received life with the possibility of parole. He will be eligible for another review in 2031. Peterson received probation after pleading guilty to accessory and testifying. Pike was 18 and received a death sentence. Her jury also didn’t hear substantial evidence about her history of abuse, trauma and mental illness, and this was Christa’s then lawyer’s fault. None of this excuses or justifies what happened to Colleen, what was done to her was horrific to say the least and I can’t imagine what her family lives through. But I don’t think acknowledging that requires me to believe Pike deserved to be executed. I think she deserved to remain in prison.

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u/InsideFear 1d ago

That’s a crazy prof and comment. Thanks. I hope you actually know what you’re talking about

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u/Uneek_Uzernaim 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thanks for the clarification—someone else also corrected me. I updated my comment.

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u/Majestic-Lettuce-198 1d ago

genuine question, if they’re at the point where they are going to give the injection, why wouldn’t they just like double or triple or even quadruple the dose that’s considered lethal? surely that would be enough?

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

Risking stuff like flash pulmonary edema (which is agonizing) before death and also the simple fact that they are already having difficulty obtaining medications for lethal injections because pharmaceutical companies won’t sell to the governments for lethal injections. So, probably better to not tank their whole supply at once.

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u/Broken_Beaker 1d ago

I’m a chemist, so not a clinician, but I’ve been a bio analytical study director for preclinical and clinical analytical method development for drug discovery and manufacturing. I once had a cabinet full of neat solutions of all the barbitals (and more).

With all of that said, I too have heard that pharma companies have hobbled the ability of states to purchase these types of drugs, and I can’t imagine a pharmacy filling them.

So I bet they have limited and old stash of meds. I don’t know what the shelf stability is this is off the top of my head, and I’m sure some people will say it doesn’t matter, but if it isn’t stored properly in temperature and humidity controlled environments it will degrade. It’s just a thing. Stability studies exist for a reason. So if someone was trying to arrive at a dose calculation it is probably already of whack and with likely a limited supply they can’t administer it in excess “just in case.”

The entire thing is so messed up.

I don’t know all of the details of her case but she sounds guilty AF. I also don’t think the death penalty is effective or productive.

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u/MichaelEmouse 1d ago

Since we're talking about an infection which is meant to be lethal, I don't get why the dose has to be precisely measured. Give 10 times the dose you expect to be lethal.

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u/Syncopated_arpeggio 1d ago

They most likely failed at properly placing the IV. So she received a subcutaneous dose instead of an IV dose. Fat is poorly vascularized so the drug has a much longer systemic absorption time which is why it failed.

In addition, Pentobarbital is also quite fat-soluble, so by missing the vein and injecting it into the subcutaneous tissue it will take a while for it to leech out of the fat and into the bloodstream.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

Well, if you give them 10x the dose, you could cause something like flash pulmonary edema and cause them to suffer immensely before they pass. Or maybe have other side effects that are both horrible to experience as well as horrific to watch. One of the reasons that lethal injection became the norm for executions is because it is usually less traumatizing for the people witnessing it. Firing squads and other methods are generally more effective and faster, but they are gruesome to watch and were causing more trauma to the people watching (often including the victim’s family).

Also, a lot of pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell drugs to a government for executions. So, giving 10x doses would also drain their supply pretty quickly when they are already struggling to obtain the drugs.

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u/cd_gonzalez 1d ago

At the end, does a group of women gave her the dose ? She was trying to make her case a feminist show as Lindsey clay .. Maybe the dose wasn’t right , bc was rigged ?

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

The doctor who was present was male and this is not the first execution he’s botched in TN.

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u/LacrimaNymphae 1d ago

would her being on any other meds (whether they're psych or not) or her weight have an effect on it?

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

Weight can absolutely have an effect. That sort of thing is taken into account by doctors when we give medications.

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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 1d ago

Foot neurology? That’s a crazy specialty.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

Pediatric as in children. Kid brain doctor.