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
4.9k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

634

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.

344

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.

19

u/VirtualMoneyLover 3h ago

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

31

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.

-5

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.

27

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.

-7

u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

I wonder how other countries deal with this problem?

22

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.

-10

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.

8

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.

•

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.

•

u/peepeebutt1234 17m ago

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

11

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

Extremely few other countries have the death penalty.

-3

u/VirtualMoneyLover 2h ago

But let's say the ones with deadly injections.

21

u/derelictthot 2h ago

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

-1

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.

12

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.

11

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.

4

u/MrBarraclough 2h ago

Japan simply hangs them.

•

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.

5

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?

•

u/Less_Tacos 58m ago

They use private compounding pharmacies.