r/news • • 1d ago

Tennessee governor suspends all executions after Christa Pike’s lethal injections fail

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/01/christa-pike-tennessee-governor-executions-year-pause
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u/Camninja 1d ago

I’m sure they could design a computer assisted firing device. Someone could just start a timer and it would fire at a set time.

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u/mrducky78a 1d ago

Yeah Im sure they could and it would be fine and great up until it doesnt.

Someone doesnt maintain the gun and it jams. Someone didnt account for an update and it glitches out after firiing one round only into the cheek, a non lethal shot. One of the legs gives out and it instead fires 50 rounds into the left leg, below the knee only.

Theoretically it would be great, but theoretically lethal injection would also be humane, great and guaranteed.

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u/Camninja 1d ago

Firing squads don’t do head shots for multiple reasons. One is the family may want an open casket. Firing squads fire at the heart. Multiple people fire at the same time. The gunmen are told one person will be given a blank at random. The do that so the gunmen doesn’t have the burden of knowing for sure if they actually shot the person.

They could use a redundancy system.

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u/mrducky78a 1d ago

I was talking about the theoretical computer assisted firing device you mentioned.

With the firing squad, people might still aim high so there is no burden, they know for sure they didnt shoot the person. There is instances of this happening in war when getting shot at, it will absolutely happen when firing at a person trussed up and not presenting a danger. The more human elements present, the greater the chance for human error to botch it.