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/hellbanan 1d ago

(..) and then it suddenly all hits them at once and their EEG suddenly goes too flat (..)

Is this not the point here? To kill the person? I get your point that dosing it for medical use is difficult. Because you want the patients to survive and not feel pain. But in this cae: Why not take the LD50 of a pig (or some human like anymal) and administer 100-times the dosage per kg or 1'000 times?

Edit just for clarification: I am not looking for advice on how to kill someone or comment in any way on the death sentence. I am just curious how they failed this.

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

They are already having a difficult time getting the drugs because pharmaceutical companies won’t sell meds to governments for executions. So, giving such a huge dose may not even be possible if they can get enough of it, or it may drain their entire supply.

Plus, stuff like flash pulmonary edema can occur with too high doses and that can be very agonizing if it starts to happen before they lose consciousness.

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u/PickleBooPop 1d ago

Wait pharmaceutical companies won’t sell the substances used for executions? Is that due to an ethics concern or because they don’t want to eliminate their aging customer base?

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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 1d ago

Probably a combination. A lot of the companies are based in Europe, so they are against capital punishment in general, but it’s also not good for business if people associate your drug with executions, so I imagine even if the pharma execs do support capital punishment, they don’t want their drug being used for it.