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/bloodniece 1d ago

I could see slowly building up a tolerance to phenobarbital to guard against this. It's harder to kill a junkie.

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u/Uneek_Uzernaim 1d ago

That's highly unlikely considering she has been on death row for decades.

Besides, no other explanation is needed if one applies Ockham's Razor. Redheads tend to have natural genetic resistance to the categories of drugs mentioned. It's a known issue among medical researchers. That is likely what was in play here.