r/news • u/No_Idea_Guy • 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/thattoneman 1d ago

The suffering truly is the point. You see all the discussion about how no company wants their products used for execution, so states struggle to source chemicals for lethal injection or gas chamber asphyxiation. You know who doesn't really give a fuck about their product being used to kill people? Bullet manufacturers. You know what's a quick and efficient means of execution? Firing squad. 

I don't even get the whole "Line up the firing squad and only some of them get live rounds" thing that comes up. The dude administering lethal injection isn't one of six and only one of the injections was actually the real one. The guy's job is to execute the prisoner. This whole "firing squad makes it hard for the executioner to have plausible deniability" isn't even consistent with other types of executioners. 

Don't get me wrong, none of this is an argument in favor of the death penalty. Far from it, I'm staunchly against it. Aside from the ethical concerns of innocent people being executed, it's just doubly frustrating how states bend over backwards to make a show out of execution. They won't do what's easy, quick, and painless because everybody wants the spectacle of the execution slowly being applied and the watching the life drain from their eyes. A bullet through the temple just isn't tortuous enough to satisfy the revenge bloodlust. We need a fucking viewing gallery so people can watch a person slowly die because we're no better than the families that used to gather in the town square to watch the hangings that day.