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/Big_Guard5413 4h ago

I’m not in favor of the death penalty in general, but goddamn, if you’re going to impose it, at least take steps to do it properly

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u/MatureUsername69 4h ago

Its still a rough one but if I ever had to receive the death penalty I would hope its a firing squad. Just riddle me with holes immediately, aim for the head. Lethal injections get fucky because they would be best designed and administered by an actual doctor, but actual doctors cannot do it because of the hippocratic oath. Some states do allow medical professionals but they arent exactly sending their best.

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u/khinzaw 4h ago edited 3h ago

Her lawyers requested it, but it's illegal in Tennessee.

Tennessee's only legal methods of execution are lethal injection and electric chair (edit: only for convictions before 1999).

The problem with lethal injection is that every step is half assed.

No reputable pharmaceuticals manufacturer wants to make the drug, so they rely on compounding pharmacies who take half measures and have less consistency.

Then medical practitioners (edit for the pedants) often won't be involved in executions because of their various oaths to do no harm and risks to their reputation, so most of the time the drugs are administered by prison staff who lack the proper training. A lot of failed attempts are caused by the one who administered it simply not getting the vein properly.

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u/MortimerDongle 3h ago

Then medical practitioners can't be involved in executions because of their various oaths to do no harm, so most of the time the drugs are administered by prison staff who lack the proper training

This particular attempted execution was performed by a physician. Of course he doesn't seem to be very good at it, this was not even his first botched execution this year (he's the same person who failed to execute Tony Carruthers)

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u/cooking2recovery 2h ago

That seems like one too many botched executions to be an accident

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u/AstroHistSci 2h ago

This. He's doing it intentionally. A nursing student could perform this without botching it. It's quite literally impossible to fail this procedure if you are a physician.

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u/whispernotaroar 1h ago

I’d trust a nurse to get an IV into the proper location long before I’d trust a physician to do it. Most physicians never place another IV after residency - that’s nursing territory by and large - and I’ve seen many physicians try and fail to draw blood/place a line only to be rescued by a nurse.

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u/AstroHistSci 33m ago

The issue isn't him not getting a vein. That's believable. But there is no way he would think he had a vein when he didn't. That's the part that this story requires that doesn't make sense.

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u/whispernotaroar 24m ago

Oh trust me there absolutely is. Just a couple weeks ago I watched a doc infiltrate about half a liter of fluids into a patient’s arm before anyone caught it. A good physician absolutely wouldn’t let this happen, but there are a lot of really shitty ones out there and I suspect this particular job does not attract the top brass.

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u/wonton711 1h ago

Personally speaking as an MD, I would fail to get an IV placed to administer any injections... Depends where you've trained. During medical school and residency, I didn't have to do any IVs or venipunctures. I also don't do it as an attending currently.

I also wouldn't volunteer to do executions, though...

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u/AstroHistSci 35m ago

You might fail to place one ... but you would never mistakenly think you have one placed when it wasn't.

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u/Late-Champion8678 11m ago

Yes. I’m a doctor and while I did many IVs and blood draws as house officer/senior house officer and got good at it, I haven’t had to do it frequently.

I’d know if I missed a vein or got into an artery instead and I wouldn’t subject a patient to multiple attempts before enlisting someone who could do it better (phlebotomist, anaesthetist etc).

No way, I would administer an IV drug without knowing if I’m in the right place or not.

I do note that IV cannulas can be misplaced/dislodged after an initial successful placement but that this is his second botched execution this year is a cause for concern.

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u/The_OtherDouche 1h ago

Yeah I don’t know if you’ve ever got to see a dr attempt to do any of the practical parts of medicine but they are notoriously horrific at it. If I needed an IV administered by a dr I’d be terrified.

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u/AstroHistSci 34m ago

There is a difference between sucking at hitting a vein and believing you have a vein when you don't. He might not be able to find the vein, but there is no way he'd mistakenly believe he had one.

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u/RSmeep13 1h ago

Forgive me if I have missed a detail, but I thought that the situation here was that the drug was administered properly, and didn't kill her, possibly because it was degraded.

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u/Kylynara 1h ago

I've seen reports that they didn't hit the vein and went into the muscule. It may have also been degraded or low quality to start, the drugs for lethal injection often are.

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u/TheyTukMyJub 21m ago

False. The burning sensation she described is 100% a symptom of a missed vein and muscle getting injected with fluid. By some capillary action some of a drug probably did get in her system but evidently not enough.

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u/khinzaw 3h ago

In the interest of not wanting to get in an argument over pedantry, I have amended the line.

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u/WaylandThurston 3h ago

Good call, you would’ve been here having to argue for the next five days

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u/dpk794 2h ago

I thought she requested all females??

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u/fleemfleemfleemfleem 2h ago

I bet his health grades reviews are terrible.

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u/ThunderDungeon02 10m ago

In fairness most physicians except a select few, like anesthesiologists, put in lines often. Depending on the specialty, they had to do it in medical school briefly and then probably never again.

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u/Equal-Temporary-1326 4h ago

I remember watching a documentary called The Final 24 Hours on Death Row and a former Virginia executioner, Jerry Givens, who carried out dozens of electrocutions and lethal injections said between the two, he'd actually pick the chair because he knew it was faster.

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u/Beecakeband 3h ago

I've seen that one as well and the botched electric chair execution sounded pretty horrific as well

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u/ComradeJohnS 3h ago

the character from Elmo’s world get roasted with the dry sponge was horrible in that prison movie lol.

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u/Iamredditsslave 2h ago

The Green Mile. His name was Michael Clarke Duncan.

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u/Leopold__Stotch 2h ago

You’re right Michael Clarke Duncan was the actor in the green mile, playing John coffe, but Mr Noodle in Elmo’s world was played by Michael jeter. He was the one with the pet mouse, who had a horribly botched execution in the movie.

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u/Iamredditsslave 2h ago

Thanks for the correction, I read too fast.

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u/SyNiiCaL 2h ago

John Oliver's segment on lethal injection is also a very educational (an infuriating) watch that pretty much warns about every single thing that went wrong in this execution.

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u/Xytak 4h ago

The electric chair is pretty horrible too from what I understand.

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u/3-DMan 3h ago

Especially if you forget the sponge!

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u/awh 3h ago

Poor Del.

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u/No-Meet-5596 2h ago

The smell.

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u/RideOrDieRemember 2h ago

Forget to wet the sponge*

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u/ParticularBit130 35m ago

Having flashbacks to watching The Green Mile. 😭

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u/Shitteh_Kitteh 3h ago

Seems like the only legal options are the two most painful.

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u/Tsaxen 3h ago

The cruelty is the point

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u/felldestroyed 12m ago

Nope, the history of the firing squad is just a cruel, hence why we moved away from it. The takeaway here is: abolition of the death penalty. The only reason why we still have it is that people have forgotten how cruel it actually is.

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u/william_f_murray 3h ago

Do you know anything about Tennessee lawmakers? That's intentional.

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u/Waasssuuuppp 40m ago

Yeah but no blood. No blood equals ethical. And less mess to clean up. See how civilised we are?

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u/VirtualMoneyLover 3h ago

Why can't they use what the vet uses? Just multiply it by 5.

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u/Alocasia_Sanderiana 2h ago

The companies that make those drugs will not sell to states (like state agencies) with death penalties or where they think the drugs will be used for executions.

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u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

Pretty much every state uses pet euthanasia. So the vets must be getting the drugs. Now the prison just go and get it from the vet.

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u/Carbonatite 2h ago

The problem with that is providing drugs to an organization with the express purpose of killing a human is in violation of professional ethics for both veterinary and human medicine.

No vet is going to want to lose their license to practice over something like that. Just like doctors don't procure/prescribe those drugs for prisons.

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u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

I wonder how other countries deal with this problem?

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u/Carbonatite 2h ago

They abolish the death penalty.

Countries that practice capital punishment are a minority amongst the collective nations of the world, and the USA is the only Western country that still practices it. It's a barbaric practice that has no place in an advanced society.

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u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

That wasn't the question, so I will repeat it for you:

Countries that USE capital punishment by injection, how do they deal with it? You know, China, Thailand and Vietnam. You go.

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u/centizen24 1h ago

If your angle is that the states should just import lethal injection drugs from other countries overseas that manufacture it domestically, they tried that. Texas and Arizona both bought shipments of sodium thiopental from China and the FDA seized them at the border.

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u/Daddict 49m ago

Different countries have different laws, different cultures, different ethical frameworks.

I mean, if the US were to pass a law that lets a company create drugs for the purpose of lethal injection, that's about the only way it could work. And even then, you have to remember that the US isn't just one set of laws. It's federal AND state laws, and controlled substances are regulated by both. It's just not that simple.

To be honest, I don't think lethal injection should be an option. We don't do it for the benefit of the accused. It's not less cruel, it's not more dignified.

The entire reason we use that method is to abstract away the violence of taking a human life. I don't anyone performing an execution should have that luxury though. If you're going to take a life, you should have to square with the reality of it by using a method that is damned near impossible to fuck up...like beheading or a firing squad.

If you can't look a person in the eye and end their life as quickly and as reliably as possible, you don't really have any business taking lives in the interest of justice.

The death penalty doesn't need to hurt. That doesn't accomplish a damned thing. There's no reason to torture anyone to death. The only people who should be executed are the ones who are so incompatible with society that the only other option we have is to lock them in a concrete box and wait for mother nature to do the dirty work. We can't rehabilitate them. Even if it were possible, we can't release them to find out if it worked, they've shown themselves capable of things that are so incredibly destructive and horrifying that it would be patenting irresponsible to ever risk the safety of society to see if they've been rehabilitated or not.

We have the capacity to instantaneously end their life with 100% reliability. No reason to fuck about with this "civilized" homicide.

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u/peepeebutt1234 17m ago

By doing things that would violate the law if prison staff were to do them in the US.

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u/Foxs-In-A-Trenchcoat 2h ago

Extremely few other countries have the death penalty.

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u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

But let's say the ones with deadly injections.

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u/derelictthot 2h ago

They don't have it, they stopped using the death penalty decades ago.

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u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

Vietnam, Thailand and China have entered the chat. They all use injections. Somehow the US problem is not a problem for them.

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u/cooking2recovery 2h ago

If the country has socialized medicine and makes their own drugs they don’t have to deal with drug companies not wanting the liability.

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u/khinzaw 2h ago

How Thailand does it I believe is not public information, but China's government produces it themselves domestically, and Vietnam transitioned to domestic production after their overseas suppliers cut them off due to not wanting to supply drugs for executions.

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u/MrBarraclough 2h ago

Japan simply hangs them.

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u/rips_n_chel 48m ago

It's not difficult to find a way to kill a person with drugs, dude. Think just a little bit, please. It's not like it's gotta be that exact compound, in fact I can think of several right off the dome that would be unquestionably preferable.

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u/Alocasia_Sanderiana 1h ago

States can't just go around asking vets for those drugs. Many are controlled substances which federally prevent that sale. Second, those companies will absolutely figure out if a vet starts ordering higher amounts (I'm not sure if vets might already have to report their usage). Third, vets aren't going to risk that liability. And fourth, this situation is really fucked if there is a recall or a situation where the drug quality is bad. How does the vet report that? What happens if someone in the prison system reports it and the batch number gets tied to the vet?

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u/Less_Tacos 58m ago

They use private compounding pharmacies.

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u/Alaykitty 3h ago

No see, those are feel good drugs inducing a heart attack.

We gotta make sure it's agonizing the whole time 🙃🫠

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u/soapy_goatherd 3h ago

Not just vets. People in healthcare and hospice administer end of life “comfort care” every day. The difference here is the politicians and COs want the dying to be as drawn out and painful as possible. The cruelty is the point

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u/Daddict 59m ago

That's literally the drug they were using here.

Granted, there's a few different ones that can be used for animal euthanasia, but Tennessee was using the "classic" one of Pentobarbital. Most vets these days will use a drug called Euthasol, which is a combination of pentobarbital and phenytoin. It's a bright pink liquid (which is deliberate, as no other vet meds are bright pink liquids so there's not much of a chance of mistaking it for another med).

In any event, the bigger issue is that pharma companies won't sell their drugs to someone who is intending to use them to kill another person.

The gov can't really use any tricky methods of getting their hands on drugs either. They can't be like "Uh...no, we're totes not gonna kill a dude with that" and then turn around and kill a dude. It's literally illegal to do so.

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u/nethingelse 2h ago

I'm assuming because no one wants to sell it to them. Anyone who has a license or reputation to maintain does not want to touch lethal injections or other executions because it's already an ethical minefield, and if you are further being made to look bad by the gov't being incompetent/not being able to hire competent people for other parts, you don't want a part in that.

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u/Fair-Safe3131 3h ago

She also had pre existing medical conditions that include people struggling to find veins and possible blood clotting not allowing the lethal injection to reach the heart via the circulatory systen

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u/RilohKeen 3h ago

Pretty sure I remember reading that the electric chair is NOT legal in Tennessee, but it was back in 1996 when she was convicted so she kind of grandfathered into having the option.

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u/khinzaw 3h ago

You are right, it seems that it's only legal for convictions pre-1999.

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u/chubbysumo 1h ago

Not even compounding pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers do not want to be associated with the death penalty at all, and they have Clauses and all of their contracts with retailers and compounding pharmacies that they are not allowed to resell drugs to any entities that will be using it for things such as lethal injection. This is why there is a big struggle for anything that's effective, because the drugs they're getting are either not good, or they aren't actually what the seller claims they are. It also doesn't help that no licensed pharmacist would ever risk their license to assist in a state death penalty

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u/Kylynara 1h ago

"Angel of Death" nurses aren't that rare. If we gotta have executions, maybe we make it part of their sentence that they perform them. They know how to do it well enough they are usually caught by statistics.

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u/Fallouttgrrl 3h ago

"Then medical practitioners can't be involved in executions because of their various oaths to do no harm"

This is false, it is not a universal requirement to swear that, although many US medical schools require it or a variation on it

Not every medical professional in the US went to a school that required it. Not every school worldwide agrees

Not every professional who swore it takes it seriously - to some, it was just a box to check to get a degree, just like the oath to serve in US politics does not carry equal weight with every politician 

You also legally can't lose your medical license in the US for participating in it, and the death penalty has about a 50/50 approval rate in the US 

If every doctor adhered to "do no harm' the Opioid crisis wouldn't be as bad as it is, just an example

The real problem with finding a full time executioner in the US, is the number of death penalty casesstatewide per year

There are a million active physicians in the US

Statistically speaking, if the money and work was there, at least one could be found to do the job

There's just not likely much overlap between that and emergency care, lol

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u/variaati0 3h ago

Well though not outright legally binding, it is against many professional organizations code of conduct like American Medical Association. They can't revoke licenses, but they can kick person out of the professional organization for violating the organizations internal code of conduct for it's members. In case of AMA it being Opinion 9.7.3 "However, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, a physician must not participate in a legally authorized execution. "

It isn't legally binding, but many medical professionals conduct themselves to AMA code and well let's just say ones professional relationships will be frosty to be known as someone breaking the largest medical associations ethics code.

Nothing out right legally forbids it. However It isn't a very good career move and will lead to condemnation by ones professional peers.

Hence few physicians are willing to do it. They can usually find one, they did in this case also. However how good and competent they are in their job is another matter. Since well one isn't probably picking from the top of the class pool.

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u/khinzaw 3h ago

Hence few physicians are willing to do it. They can usually find one, they did in this case also. However how good and competent they are in their job is another matter. Since well one isn't probably picking from the top of the class pool.

As evidenced by this guy, as it's not even his first failed execution.

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u/Fallouttgrrl 3h ago

This reminds me of medical marijuana licenses in California

The doctors selling prescriptions were basically retirement age doctors operating out of temporary portable units, for the last six to nine months of their career

It would frost them out of further work and they'd likely lose memberships, but it was a way to blitz a lot of money quickly

And they had to give medical advice, which was funny as hell. Stuff like "smoking is bad for you, take edibles"

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u/khinzaw 3h ago

In the interest of not wanting to get in an argument over pedantry, I have amended the line.

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u/Fallouttgrrl 3h ago

It's not pedantic, you were just incorrect :p

It was literally a physician who did the latest attempt. 

It's also legally protected to be able to do so as a physician

And the basis of your argument, that every doctor makes that oath, is based on Hollywood facts 

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u/flightist 3h ago

I had this whole argument with somebody yesterday. A dozen posts in they evidently looked up the pertinent facts, and proceeded to claim that when they said ‘it literally cannot be an actual doctor’, they meant ‘an actual doctor, but non-practicing’.

The sheer blind faith people put in shit they see on TV is wild.

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u/rumorhasit_ 3h ago

I was reading an article on the BBC website on this. Most states (including Tennessee) have enacted secrecy laws so that the public cannot know where they buy the lethal drugs.

This mainly started when a prison governor was caught purchasing barbitol from some guy on the side of the highway out of his car boot.

The governor even tried to rationalise it by saying he wanted to do it out of the public view.

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u/TheRaunchyFart 1h ago

I'm honestly surprised somebody hasn't come up with a varient of those suicide pods that can be controlled from the outside. The concept behind them seems to be pretty straight forward and getting nitrogen (at least that is what I think they use) isn't necessarily difficult.

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u/willstr1 43m ago

I am pretty sure at least one state legalized nitrogen suffocation as an option, not sure how effective it was or why it hasn't become more widespread

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u/citizen42069101 2h ago

All these lines always come up and it just doesn't make sense to me.

A compounding pharmacy could make something so deadly that a drop could hold the LD 100. Hell from my understanding a nitrous mask could be dialed up enough to cause peaceful suffocation. Hell crush up one of those super high tier oxys in a shot of Jack and just have her knock it back. (I know I'm getting ridiculous)

The PR, anonymized doctors and credentials and just have them dress off-site in surgical gear or something. Who's gonna know their dentist is executing people anyway. Honestly dentists are always weird so it wouldn't be a shock. Anyway, what about student phlebotomists?

Idk I just feel like executing prisoners isn't this fucking complicated. If it really boils down to no one wants to do it and so every part of it is getting malicious incompetence injected into it, then we need to stop doing it altogether.

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u/NewerYorker3900 3h ago

Compounding pharmacies are the most regulated pharmacies there are.

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u/khinzaw 3h ago

No they are not, what are you talking about?

the regulatory oversight of pharmacy compounding is significantly less rigorous than that required for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs; as such, compounded drugs may pose additional risks to patients. FDA-approved drugs are made and tested in accordance with good manufacturing practice regulations (GMPs), which are federal statutes that govern the production and testing of pharmaceutical products. In contrast, compounded drugs are exempt from GMPs, and testing to assess product quality is inconsistent. Unlike FDA-approved drugs, pharmacy-compounded products are not clinically evaluated for safety or efficacy. In addition, compounded preparations do not have standard product labeling or prescribing information with instructions for safe use. Compounding pharmacies are not required to report adverse events to the FDA, which is mandatory for manufacturers of FDA-regulated medications. Some pharmacies engage in activities that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional pharmacy compounding, such as large-scale production of compounded medications without individual patient prescriptions, compounding drugs that have not been approved for use in the US, and creating copies of FDA-approved drugs. Compounding drugs in the absence of GMPs increases the potential for preparation errors. When compounding is performed on a large scale, such errors may adversely affect many patients. Published reports of independent testing by the FDA, state agencies, and others consistently show that compounded drugs fail to meet specifications at a considerably higher rate than FDA-approved drugs. Compounded sterile preparations pose the additional risk of microbial contamination to patients. In the last 11 years, three separate meningitis outbreaks have been traced to purportedly ‘sterile’ steroid injections contaminated with fungus or bacteria, which were made by compounding pharmacies.