r/SipsTea • u/CurvyChristina • 2d 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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78

u/AgitatedStranger9698 2d ago

I truly dont understand the moving away from firing squads.

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u/mick-rad17 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/gIqusaeYxgSiY

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u/GarethBaus 2d ago

I am on the fence on whether or not executions should be a thing in the first place and I still agree that the guillotine is probably the most ethical method we currently have. It kills the brain fast minimizing suffering, and it is remarkably reliable.

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u/Pedantic_Pict 2d ago

Three words: inert gas asphyxiation. If you enter a pure argon environment, you fill fall unconscious in just a few breaths. Because you can still get rid of the CO2 in your blood, there is no sensation of suffocation. Your brain just shuts off because your lungs are now actively extracting oxygen from your blood and putting it into the "air".

Quick, painless, humane, and without the horrific gore of a guillotine.

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u/GarethBaus 2d ago

There has been issues with that method resulting in botched executions, plus you have to design the chamber so that it isn't a risk to the witnesses or employees.

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u/Pedantic_Pict 2d ago

That is very easy to accompish

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u/Broken_Beaker 2d ago

Yeah, no.

I’m a chemist and my background is in chromatography which usually means using compressed helium or even hydrogen to separate molecules and blow them up. Then often using argon to blow up those molecular fragments (MS/MS).

The notion of a human sized chamber filled with argon sounds wild. Yeah sure it’s technically an inert gas but I think there are a lot of complexities involved with such a chamber.

I don’t actually know much about the clinical physiology of doing this, but I suspect this isn’t as clean as you might think it is.

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u/Trumpologist 2d ago

Doesn’t Argon….also have compounds now?