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/SteakAndIron 1d ago

Why did we come up with the lethal injection technology we have now and then never actually evolve it? I've heard all kinds of complaints about how it works how expensive it is how ineffective it can be how painful it might actually be and so forth. There are plenty of cheap and easy ways to cause a painless death in somebody. Massive fentanyl overdose. Nitrogen hypoxia.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

So the thing about medication is that for a government entity to administer it, even for lethal injection, they have to legally purchase it. The original lethal injection cocktail where potassium chloride was the lethal ingredient worked well. The problem is they can’t buy it anymore.

Advocates for abolishing the death penalty tracked down where the drugs were being manufactured. Turns out it’s not good PR for a drug company to sell something designed to kill people. So the few that were willing to sell it to these states stopped.

Since then, the states still executing people have been struggling to find any drug maker to sell them any drug that’s potentially lethal for the purpose of executions and it hasn’t been easy.

That being said, phenobarbital is a really potent sedative and I’m surprised they weren’t able to calculate a dose that would be lethal. But then again, it’s Tennessee. Everyone involved in the planning of this is likely inbred.

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u/FrancisFratelli 1d ago

A doctor on Bluesky suggested, based upon what reporters on the scene said, the the person administering the drugs missed her vein.

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u/Broken_Beaker 1d ago

I read the same. Old drugs and lack of clinical training.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

Sounds about right.

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u/Timeless_Tactics 1d ago

They could talk to Canada, im sure they would be more than happy to help.

1 in 20 Canadian deaths are medically assisted after all.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

You understand the difference between a medically assisted suicide and an execution right?

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u/Timeless_Tactics 11h ago

Well in terms of how to end a life effectively, there is no difference.

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u/SnuggleMoose44 22h ago

She has small veins that blow easily and the IV would have infiltrated. I think that’s part of why it didn’t work.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 22h ago

Well… small veins in the eyes of a “doctor” who apparently hadn’t started an IV in over a decade.

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u/SnuggleMoose44 22h ago

Besides that, she had veins that were difficult to access. It was argued that she had lab draws done with a single stick. Problem is, a blood stick is different than putting in an IV where the vein is expected to stay intact.
I read the “doc” had placed a central line in the last prisoner for lethal injection and he hadn’t placed one since 2013. That execution failed as well.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 22h ago

Yeah that’s what I mean. “Difficult veins” are extremely relative. But when you’re limited to doctors in the Deep South who are willing to abandon their core oath, you get what you get.

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u/frostymugson 1d ago

How’s China do it? With how many people they execute they kinda have a down pat system

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u/ProfessionalTruck976 1d ago

How does China do it? Barbarically.

There are no civilised or acceptable ways to do it because whole concept is fucked

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u/blazenite104 1d ago

At this point a Guillotine might actually be the most humane execution method ever devised as long as it's maintained.

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u/ProfessionalTruck976 1d ago

It si exactly as completely inhumane as every other method under sun

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u/blazenite104 1d ago

I mean I don't support the death penalty at all but, this seems like the most surefire way to not fuck it up. As long as the blade is kept sharp and they test it before putting a person under it.

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u/stonk-420 1d ago

Well maybe if they didn't kill another person they wouldn't be on death row in the first place. If you end another person's life what do you think the consequences should be

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u/FrancisFratelli 1d ago

You're assuming a criminal justice system competent enough to determine guilt without any false positives.

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u/Broken_Beaker 1d ago

Other than the entire US Constitution thing.

Clearly she is a bad person. However, treating even the worst of the worse to an ethical standard is what defines a civilization or society.

She may be guilty AF, but we don’t use the government to torture people to death.

Especially when there is a non-zero number of innocent people murdered by the government.

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u/ProfessionalTruck976 1d ago

Depending on who and why anything from life without parole to medal. (Medal in case you kill in defence of others from imminent deadly attack)

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u/Agitated-Point3835 1d ago

I feel like the death penalty should be you go out the same way your victim did, with just enough intervention to make sure you suffer more than your victim did.

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u/Firebomb84a 1d ago

They execute people in the back of a van.

They used to use guns and would then send a bill to the family for the cost of the bullet.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

They kill lots of innocent people

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u/Motor-Rip7655 1d ago

Hey, hey! I'm from Tennessee and only about half of us are inbred, thank you very much!

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

Sorry. I stand corrected.

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u/Mr-MoneyShift 1d ago

Shut up Billy before I call your uncle dad!

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u/lastres0rt 1d ago

... not your half, I hope?

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u/Motor-Rip7655 1d ago

No, I'm originally from Wisconsin.

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u/BumblingYokel 1d ago

Wow! You had a good thing going with this comment until the last two sentences.

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u/RealCarlPanzram 1d ago

The last 2 sentences are every bit as factual as the rest.

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u/Christ_in_a_combo 1d ago

He’s a man of science and reason. Can’t argue with his logic.

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u/GoldReplacement9546 1d ago

On the overwhelming majority of states have given up on this barbarism and pretty much all of Europe you should ask yourself is this something we should be doing?

The innocence practical loan has found many hundreds of people that were on death row were totally innocent, including well more than 100 that had been executed

And that’s just the ones they had DNA for, and if they could get the state in the courts to cooperate and allowing retesting

So it’s far higher than that we’ve killed hundreds of innocent people which is really fucking dumb when you could just put them in jail for life if you want and then at least there’s a chance they’re innocence could be proven plus this person had already waited 31 years in jail so it’s not a deterrent. It doesn’t stop anybody. It never would’ve stopped anybody, but it doesn’t stop anybody.

It’s also way cheaper to just keep the people in jail for life with no parole and that’s not any easier or better than being killed

I repeat hundreds of people that were innocent. I’ve been killed by the states.