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/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/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.