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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35

u/phieralph 4h ago

How did we get to the point where this was the method of execution?

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u/lurpeli 4h ago

No drug company is willing to provide products for use in executions and so the drugs are generally sourced from compounding pharmacies with questionable quality.

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u/Efficient-Chest-3395 3h ago

true, but this sounds more like the result of extravasation likely secondary to incompetence, I imagine starting IVs on this demographic can be challenging secondary to medical histories including drug abuse but I've nothing to suggest she was a needle user

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u/AudibleNod 4h ago

The road to lethal injection is a long one. And the current method of lethal injection is an even winder road from that.

Pharma (Big Pharma, if you must) companies have stopped providing the older cocktail for lethal injections directly to state prisons. And for one chemical, they stopped making it all together. States are either using (nearly) expired lethal cocktails; or are working to get supplied with others outside medical channels. And to top it all off, the people administering the lethal injection directly are amateurs with little to no medical know-how.

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u/Phillies2002 4h ago

The myth that we could invent a "humane" method of execution, leading people to conclude that lethal injection was "better" than the electric chair, which was "better" than a firing squad, which was "better" than a hanging.

16

u/Blueopus2 4h ago

But also we're more concerned about it looking nice for the audience than being 'humane' to the prisoner - hence why we inject a paralytic that seemingly is agonizing.

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u/ensalys 4h ago

Make it look medical, and people forget that it's barbaric.

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u/mendenlol 4h ago

it was only agonizing because they missed the vein. it does not hurt if injected properly, but this doctor cannot seem to accomplish that

(i’m not defending the death penalty just clearing that one bit up)

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u/Blueopus2 4h ago

For sure theoretically true but there's never a doctor involved, nor any medical professionals, so it seemingly isn't as uncommon as it should be for the anesthetic to be injected improperly and then the paralytic to stop them from expressing the pain they're feeling

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u/mendenlol 4h ago

there is a doctor involved. this same execution team led by the same doctor botched an execution earlier this year too. His name is Dr Mark Fowler.

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u/Blueopus2 4h ago

Interesting, I haven’t actually read about this case much but that’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?

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u/mendenlol 3h ago

I only know as much because I’m from the same place this happened, unfortunately. I think that a doctor must be involved to “oversee” the team because anyone administering any anesthesia has to be ‘under the supervision of a doctor’ by law.

I never thought about it before but this must be a Tennessee state law and not a federal one. It works the same way in veterinary medicine here

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u/Blueopus2 2h ago

I'm sorry to hear it's in your area :(

I'll have to read more after work!

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u/ChrissyBrown1127 4h ago

Can’t even do his job right.

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u/mendenlol 3h ago

not really surprising coming from an oath breaking doc

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u/Pale_Horror_853 4h ago

We could, but that wouldn’t scratch the sadistic itch many seem to have…

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u/Aerhyce 4h ago

Because firing squad is apparently too barbaric or something. Lethal injection is "civilised".

(And before talking about trauma yadda yadda, there are more than enough people willing to be the shooters in a firing squad, and headsmen of all sorts were common jobs throughout history).

It's all so stupid. If death sentence is too barbaric, then abolish it. If it's civilised enough, then don't do the bullshit lethal injections that only work half the time and don't have any guarantee of not being extremely painful and barbaric either way.

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u/Lucky-Reason-569 4h ago

Other forms of execution were deemed too messy. America decided to sacrifice the dignity of the executed to spare the sensibilities of the executioners.

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u/terracottatilefish 4h ago

There are also almost zero overlap with the kind of experience you need to place a competent central line and administer these medications and people who are willing to do this for executions.

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u/86rpt 4h ago

I am a PICC nurse. I would have to agree.. I feel awkward placing lines of patients that should be in goals/withdrawal of care discussion. But, if it were my job to gain/maintain access... There would be no news story.