r/deathpenalty

It seems like she went an entire hour without sufficient oxygen all while two massive syringe worths of toxin was flowing into her. Her blood and heart were already compromised so her heart is definitely having a difficult time.

Other things like the busted vein, her lungs, kidneys, and stomach all create a recipe for disaster.

Even if she was to “survive” she’d be an absolute vegetable. The brain can only go so long without sufficient oxygen and the most important surfaces are highly sensitive to deprivation meaning that her brain cells are definitely diiminised.

She’d probably have to live the rest of her drastically shortened life in a specialised facility, unable to move, speak or form new memories.

Either way she gets a much worse fate than if she was executed normally.

I can't find straight information. (I'm also not really looking too hard because faith in humanity is already evaporating.)

Is she dead? Is she a vegetable?

What is the current status???

All the debate on this sub has forced me to think about developing new techniques for executions that would be effective, efficient, and relatively painless for the condemned. I've developed a new technique that I think might address most of these concerns.

The condemned person would be fitted with a hard polymeric collar around their neck. The collar would include a GPS module, an rf transceiver, a processor, and one or more explosives that are shaped charges. When the order for execution is authorized an instruction can be transmitted wirelessly to the device, causing the processor to detonate the charges in the collar.

Death would be instantaneous so the condemned would not suffer. The nice thing about this system is that it would not require any of the sort of barbaric rituals still practiced in executions. The condemned would not have to be led to some sort of execution chamber, or even informed in advance of the execution order. In fact, they would not necessarily have to be kept in strick confinement. They would not even know the time had come. One moment they could be walking in a forest or hiking on a beach and the next moment the charges are triggered and their head is separated from their body.

Would this type of system pass the legal tests for cruel and unusual punshment?

Other inmates have had their execution called off after they couldn’t find a vein but Pike is the first person to survive after the lethal injection drugs were administered. In 2014 in Oklahoma Clayton Lockett initially survived after being given a new cocktail of lethal injection drugs but he died from a heart attack shortly after. Her lawyers said she’s currently in critical condition at the hospital.

WTF

Why is it a big issue?

I get it that it should be as humane as possible, but if they are going to expire anyway, and they have to pay for their deeds, why kick p a big fuss?

The absolute torture that the State of Tennessee put Christa Pike through, not once but twice, has to be proof that capital punishment was and is never about punishment or deterrence, and all about revenge.

How is the supposed greatest country in the world, obsessed with freedom and liberty and the bill of rights, okay with executing people in 2026? And then when the incompetent state employees fail once, okay with them repeating the same mistakes a second time?

If you were going to be executed what method would you choose and why?

Also, feel free to list your favorite to least favorite methods.

Quick and painless. Simple; no need for doctors, electricians, etc.

[supprimé]

Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike on Sept. 30. Now, doctors are working to save her life.

A hospital must take affirmative action to restore the health of a death row inmate after a failed execution attempt, according to a legal expert and hospital official.

Pike was scheduled to be killed by lethal injection on Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.But the procedure was unsuccessful and Pike was sent to an unknown hospital.

“She is a patient like any other and a hospital would have a legal obligation to treat her and (attempt) to keep her from enduring any pain and restore her to health,” Nashville attorney David Raybin said. “She was sentenced to be executed by the State of Tennessee. The hospital is not bound by that order. They can’t facilitate her death.

“Because the state (sent) her to the hospital. Once they did that, the state has said ‘we want this woman to receive medical care.’”

Vanderbilt University Medical Center spokesperson John Howser confirmed a hospital would work to treat and restore the health of a person following an unsuccessful execution attempt, but didn’t elaborate.

The goal was to execute her and she’s apparently in critical condition. Why get her medical help? If they had left her alone long enough she probably would have died.

“Let’s execute her”

…..

“oh no! Shes dying, take her to a hospital”

At what point to do they stop trying to kill her and try to save her life instead? It sounds like it was a failed execution (as in, she didn’t die) only bc they got her medical help.

Just trying to understand the logic 😅

Edit: If anyone is wondering like I was, MsFinch below explained it perfectly

I know there are a lot of discussions about why we aren’t getting an update on Christa Pike’s condition, whether she experienced brain trauma, whether she’s on life support - and if so, why - and so I wanted to pop in and offer a bit of information on Nembutal overdose as I have seeen it in the post-trauma critical care setting.

Overdosing on a barbiturate like Nembutal (the trade name of pentobarbital) is quite different than overdosing on drugs like opiates that people are more familiar with. Nembutal is not only used in lethal injection; it is the primary component in euthanasia for animals, it is the most common drug (in oral form) used in MAID in the United States, and it is a simple barbiturate sleep aid. Its mechanism of action as a sleep aid is what may be responsible for the lack of updates we are getting from TNDOC.

Nembutal puts the brain into a deep sleep, in simplest terms, by quieting everything down. When a patient overdoses on this type of drug, they often come in with the appearance of brain death. There have been cases where a patient has arrived with no brain activity at all, and, as wild as this is going to sound, they have retained an absence of brain activity for as many as five days. So if you had a loved one overdose on this type of drug you might be encouraged to keep that person on life support for much longer than would be recommended with, for example, an overdose of opiates; a patient who is experiencing limited or no brain activity after having overdosed on fentanyl is gone, but a patient who is experiencing the same after having overdosed on Nembutal might well still be in there.

If Christa Pike is, as many suspect, on “life support” then they may keep her there for several days to see what brain activity resumes. She may never wake at all, she may have suffered hypoxic brain damage that forever changes her life, or she may wake up totally fine. It sounds crazy, but I’ve seen it happen.

This is just something I’ve had bouncing around in my head all night. While I have seen many overdoses in clinical settings, Pharmacology is absolutely not my area of specialty. I would be really interested to hear from someone for whom pharmacology is an area of expertise, or even from other people who have witnessed or experienced barbiturate overdose, to see your perspective on this. Do you think she’s totally cooked? What impact do you think the use of a single, barbiturate-class drug will have on her neurological outcome, if any at all?

May cross post to a pharmacology sub if I can find one where this discussion fits, but I thought for sure it would beeed discussion here. Thanks for reading!

If TDOC followed “every step” of the execution protocol, where did the decision to resuscitate Christa Pike come from?

I am not a lawyer, so I am genuinely interested in hearing where my reasoning is wrong.

I have been following the case of Christa Pike and thinking about it from a somewhat different angle. I am not arguing that Pike is innocent, that her crime should be forgiven, or that she should simply be released.

My question is about what the law should do when a death sentence is carried out and the person survives.

According to TDOC, every step of the established execution protocol was followed.

That statement raises a question for me.

As I understand the publicly available description of Tennessee's lethal-injection protocol, the sequence is essentially:

First dose → check whether the inmate is dead → if not, administer the second prescribed dose → check again → document the execution.

The protocol provides for a second dose if the first dose does not result in death.

But where is the next step?

Where does it say:

“If the inmate remains alive after the second dose, begin resuscitation, call an ambulance, and transport the inmate to a hospital”?

I have not found such a provision.

I also have not found a provision establishing that the State must wait one hour, two hours, three hours, or any other specific amount of time after the second dose before determining what to do next.

That creates what I believe is a very important legal question:

If TDOC truly followed every step of the execution protocol, what specific provision authorized the transition from execution to life-saving medical intervention after the second dose?

I am not arguing that medical personnel should simply abandon a living human being.

I am asking whether the decision to actively preserve the inmate's life after the final prescribed step of an execution constitutes an action outside the execution protocol.

There is an important distinction here.

If the execution failed because of a mechanical problem, equipment failure, inability to establish IV access, improper drug delivery, human error, lack of training, or another failure in the execution process, then I can understand why the State would argue that the execution itself was never completed.

But what if the State actually performed every required step correctly?

What if both prescribed doses were administered?

What if the required checks were performed?

What if the inmate nevertheless remained alive because of an extraordinary physiological response?

At that point, I think the legal situation becomes fundamentally different.

One person's body may respond to a drug in seconds. Another person's body may respond differently. If the protocol does not establish a specific maximum waiting period after the second dose, why should the State be allowed to decide that a certain amount of time has passed and therefore abandon the execution procedure and begin actively reversing its consequences?

Imagine an extreme example.

If the inmate remained alive for 24 hours and then unexpectedly regained consciousness, completely stable and without requiring emergency intervention, I could understand the argument that the State had completed every step of the prescribed execution procedure but encountered an extraordinary physiological outcome.

But if the State itself intervenes after the second dose, actively resuscitates the inmate, provides life-saving treatment, and transports the inmate to a hospital, then the question becomes whether that medical intervention itself became a human factor affecting the outcome.

That is why I think the exact wording of the protocol matters enormously.

TDOC says:

“We followed every step.”

Then I would like to know:

Where is the step authorizing resuscitation after the second dose?

If there is no such step, then perhaps the issue is not simply that the execution “failed.”

Perhaps the State completed the prescribed execution procedure and then encountered a situation that the protocol simply did not adequately address.

That leads me to a possible legislative solution.

I would propose that Tennessee create a specific statutory rule distinguishing between:

1. An execution that failed because the execution process itself failed, and

2. A completed execution procedure after which the condemned person unexpectedly remains alive.

In the first situation — mechanical failure, equipment malfunction, failure to deliver the drugs, human error, improper procedure, premature termination, etc. — the death sentence could remain enforceable.

In the second situation, however, I believe a second execution should be prohibited.

Something along these lines:

«If a person sentenced to death undergoes the complete execution procedure prescribed by law and the applicable execution protocol, and all required steps of that procedure are properly performed, but the person remains alive due to an individual physiological condition or response that could not reasonably have been anticipated or prevented, the death sentence shall be deemed fully executed and satisfied.»

The statute could then expressly state that this does not mean the person is innocent or should be released.

The conviction remains.

The person remains a convicted offender.

The person remains in the custody of the State of Tennessee.

The person remains confined in a state correctional institution until death.

What changes is only this:

There is no second execution.

I would actually avoid calling this a “replacement” of the death sentence with life imprisonment.

Instead, the law could say that the death sentence itself has been fully executed, and that continued confinement until death is the legal consequence of surviving that completed execution.

That distinction matters because otherwise someone could argue:

«“The court sentenced this person to death, not life imprisonment.”»

The answer would be:

Correct. The court sentenced the person to death. The State executed that sentence. The person survived. The legislature then determines what happens when a person survives a completed execution.

That is not an acquittal.

It is not a pardon.

It is not a declaration that the crime no longer matters.

It is simply a rule for an extraordinary situation that the existing execution protocol apparently did not adequately anticipate.

And I think there is also a broader principle here.

If the State makes a mistake in carrying out an execution, the State should not necessarily be allowed to correct that mistake by simply trying to kill the person again.

If the person survives because the execution process itself failed, that is one question.

But if the State has already carried out the complete prescribed procedure and the person survives despite it, attempting to execute the person a second time would mean intentionally causing death again because the person's body did not respond in the expected way.

I think there is a more humane solution:

Keep the conviction.

Keep the person imprisoned.

Keep the person under State custody until death.

But do not execute the person a second time.

Then rewrite the execution protocol so that this situation can never again be left to improvisation.

The revised protocol should explicitly state what happens after the first dose, after the second dose, how long observation lasts, what constitutes completion of the execution, whether medical intervention is permitted, who has authority to order it, and what happens if the condemned person remains alive.

There should never again be a situation where the people carrying out an execution have to determine in real time what they are legally allowed to do after the final prescribed step.

And finally, this is where my personal perspective comes in.

Right now I am sitting on my balcony, drinking a beer and debating with ChatGPT about human life — even when the person whose life we are discussing is someone who committed an extremely serious crime.

I am not trying to portray myself as someone who simply wants to save a criminal.

I am not trying to excuse the crime.

I am not arguing for release.

I am asking what justice should look like when something extraordinary happens that the law and the execution protocol apparently were not prepared for.

If a convicted person survives an execution despite everything that was supposed to cause death, and this is the first situation of its kind, perhaps the State should recognize the extraordinary circumstance and choose mercy instead of making a second attempt to kill that person.

The crime remains.

The conviction remains.

The imprisonment remains.

The person remains under State custody until death.

Only the second attempt to take that person's life is removed.

That is the solution I would propose: if the investigation confirms that the execution procedure was completed and the subsequent intervention was outside the established protocol, do not execute the person again. Keep the person imprisoned for life, and rewrite the protocol strictly for every future execution.

I would genuinely like to hear from people with legal knowledge:

Am I missing a Tennessee statute, court decision, or provision of the execution protocol that answers this question?

Why didn't they just keep pumping more poison into her veins until she died? If they ran out of poison, why didn't they just let her lay on the gurney until she died naturally? Since she's on life support, doesn't that mean she'd be dead if they don't continue? Can't they just pull the plug on her?

People think the electric chair is painful, but they don't realize is that when that amount of electricity hits the brain they immediately lose consciousness. So, the inmate is basically electrocuted while they're unconscious and can't feel a thing. And they're usually dead in less than a minute. I don't see why people think it's so cruel then. It's a lot better than waiting 20 minutes to die while strapped down and getting injected with drugs.