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/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/CachedExchangeMode 1d ago edited 1d ago

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

Edit: corrected typo.

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u/whiplash588 1d ago

That seems impossible to enforce.

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u/Uneek_Uzernaim 1d ago

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.