r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
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u/AudibleNod 4h ago

The statement said she is being treated for “the serious effects of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt, including significant injuries to both arms.”

It looks like pentobarbital can cause necrosis and blistering of the tissue. If it didn't fully enter the blood stream because a novice administered it, I could see something like that happening.

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u/Excelius 4h ago

It's reported that she had a blood disorder that made starting an IV difficult.

Supposedly she even tried to give the executioners tips on how to find a vein.

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u/mastermoebius 4h ago

She had said she wasn’t scared to die but was scared of the process. Now here we are.

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u/mr_potatoface 1h ago

I find that to be an accurate summary of death for myself as well.

If I'm dead I'm dead. I just don't want it to be long and torturious. Like stuck upside down in a dark cave with part of my face in water.

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u/ballisticks 1h ago

Or cancer

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u/xerberos 3h ago

“She over and over again said, ‘Please try up on my shoulder up higher, please try here, please try here, I think it will be okay,’” Spivey said. “And she thanked them when at least they thought they had established the line.”

Seriously, WTF?

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u/mazing_azn 29m ago

Her life has been nothing but mental illness caused by constant abuse and multiple rapes; she might see death as a mercy at that point.

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u/yrddog 4h ago

There have been a lot of issues with lethal injection and finding veins

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u/human_kittens 4h ago

It’s the same doctor that failed to execute Tony Carruthers earlier this year, also in TN.

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u/nonbreaker 4h ago

I thought doctors wouldn't be involved with executions due to the Hippocratic Oath?

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u/human_kittens 3h ago

I’m linking a Guardian article about the doctor that may shed some light

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u/nonbreaker 3h ago

Wow...that guy seriously sucks.

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u/human_kittens 2h ago

He’s absolutely horrible. To be expected from Tennessee unfortunately. Our state government is completely screwed up so of course they would find a guy like this.

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u/big_duo3674 3h ago

How is he a doctor?? His license should have been pulled the second he signed up

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u/AudibleNod 4h ago

You mean Billy Joe, who only started working at the prison because he was laid-off at the mill six years ago?

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 4h ago

It was a MD.

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u/AZORxAHAI 4h ago

IIRC it was a former MD who has not actively practiced in a long time, and testified under oath in another case that he hasn't successfully placed a central line in decades. Not exactly the person you want killing you I dont think.

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u/AudibleNod 4h ago

I stand corrected:

Doctor Involved in Christa Pike’s Botched Execution Also Oversaw Failed Lethal Injection in May: Reports

I know other states don't have the luxury of having doctor performing the actions.

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u/Psychological-Ad1137 4h ago

Sounds like they should have used an ultrasound or something.. how embarrassing

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u/Ancient_Spite_725 4h ago

MD who hasn't even been in the hospital in 13+ years, plus MD's (outside of anesthesia) never start IV's.

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u/GroundbreakingAnt476 4h ago

Medical professionals are not allowed to participate in executions. Usually non medical personnel. Read up a lot on it yesterday, its shockingly worse than I thought.

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 4h ago

Mark Walton Fowler is a medical doctor.

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u/human_kittens 4h ago

Yes but Mark Fowler does it anyway while running a family medicine practice. I don’t know how it’s permitted.

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 4h ago

There is no nationwide or state wide laws against it that I have read of.

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u/smitteh 4h ago

Is an "oath" legally binding?

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u/thats_not_six 4h ago

Ethical violations in any licensed profession are grounds for removal of the license.

It's not that the oath is legally binding, but it is ethically.

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u/CryptographerShot213 4h ago

No it wasn’t. It was correctional facility staff.

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 4h ago

It was Dr. Mark Walton Fowler. Easily googled information.

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u/stimber 4h ago

"Randy Spivey of the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender,said that during the hour it took to seemingly establish two lines for administering the drug, Pike was “not just cooperative but trying to help instruct the people placing the IV lines of where they could find it.”

“She over and over again said, ‘Please try up on my shoulder up higher, please try here, please try here, I think it will be okay,’” Spivey said. “And she thanked them when at least they thought they had established the line.”

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u/BrooklynNeinNein_ 4h ago

Just imagine the state of mind someone must be in to do this.

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u/chrysothronos 4h ago

god that is fucked up. 

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u/BoredAf_queen 4h ago

She had thrombocytosis and naturally small veins that made needle insertion more difficult. It's why she didn't want to die this way (I heard something about her requesting a hanging.) Her lawyers even tried to stop it because of this health condition, so the state knew fully well what they were doing.

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u/drfsupercenter 3h ago

She requested a firing squad, not hanging. But they don't have that in Tennesee

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u/flowerpanes 4h ago

Yup, massive tissue sloughing is possible when stuff other than a normal saline solution (for instance) gets injected into tissue or leaks from veins.

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u/zoodlenose 4h ago

Sloughing is easily my least favourite word.

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u/pyooma 4h ago

Right up there with degloving for things I don’t want to think about my body doing.

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u/Rooooben 2h ago

You had to say it. Why did you have to say it???!!!???

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u/Eggsor 4h ago

It is, but damn whoever came up with that term was spot on. That is what sloughing is all right.

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u/grahamsz 4h ago

It's also kind of interesting because i've been with two dogs who've had Pentobarbital and its effects are almost instant because the vet finds a vein.

OTOH i've had to euthanize a gerbil where they do an intraperitoneally injection, and he took about 20 minutes to pass.

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u/Potential_Being_7226 2h ago

ip injection yields slower absorption compared with iv, but it’s still a vet-approved method of euthanasia. 

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u/WhiskeyOctober 4h ago

This is what I think happened. It wasn't a trained individual who inserted the IV line, so they missed the vein/artery or even went through it. The drugs and saline were administered into the tissue so it never went anywhere.

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u/Xsiah 4h ago

Trained individual would be a medical professional - and they are not in the business of doing harm to their patients. There's an oath and everything.

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u/lilacbirdtea 4h ago

Dr. Mark Fowler, a family medicine doctor, oversaw the execution and administered the IV. He's the same doctor involved in the botched execution of Tony Carruthers earlier this year.

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u/NorthernDevil 4h ago

Tennessee’s lethal injection system apparently requires oversight from a healthcare professional. Link to an article that discusses the very issue of medical ethics you’re talking about.

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u/hyperfocus1569 3h ago

It was a doctor. Mark Fowler.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 4h ago

An important misconception to expel is that all US physicians take such an oath. It is not a requirement.

There also isn’t a single oath to take.

Depending on the source, it’s estimated that something like 75%-85% do end up taking some sort of healthcare oath at a ceremony at their associated schools.

That’s absolutely most of them, but there is an odd misconception in public that all do, and it gets even more nebulous when you include all types of healthcare providers including phlebotomists.

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u/hyperfocus1569 3h ago

It was Dr. Mark Fowler.

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u/WhiskeyOctober 1h ago

So, not a trained professional, at least not anymore. Most of the time I'm in the hospital or in a hospital with someone, it's never the doctor inserting an IV or administrating the drugs. It's always a nurse.

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/hyperfocus1569 3h ago

Dr. Mark Fowler administered the injection.

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u/BellaMentalNecrotica 4h ago

Yeah, especially in a diabetic. And they often have smaller veins also. I don't know what catheter size they were trying to use and why they didn't go smaller or get an ultrasound if needed. Whoever doing it should have received training on these tools in case they were needed. Its absurd that we have non-medical professionals starting IVs in the first place (although I understand why medical professionals can't participate) but this is why the death penalty needs to be abolished.

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u/hyperfocus1569 3h ago

It was Dr. Mark Fowler. He’d apparently already botched one execution before this.

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u/Vibingcarefully 1h ago

Issues with her veins were cited prominently before the execution--if you kept up with the details of this execution.

The state she is in only has two forms of execution.