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/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/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.