Tennessee woman on death row taken to hospital after surviving two lethal injections
Christa Pike, sentenced to death over 1995 murder, was heard snoring 40 minutes after lethal doses administered, witnesses said
Executing someone 30 years later somehow violates my own sense of good sense. Not that I’d go to the barricades on this, nor necessarily hold the position if really pressed. But swift and vicious maybe, a generation later seems not quite right somehow.
The Tennessee Department of Correction later confirmed that Pike had survived the state’s effort to execute her, saying “the lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening.”
“Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility,” the statement concluded.
It’s always one of those little things that gets me, that they’re going to have to take care of her, cure her, before they try again.
There are these legends about trying to execute someone three times.
This illustrates one of the reasons why I have turned against capital punishment. Endemic bureaucratic incompetence means that it is no longer a certain and secure procedure.
Bullet between the eyes works like Sex Panther.
60% of the time it works first time.
I just had to check the quote
60% of the time it works every time.
🙂
Not if the State of Tennessee is pulling the trigger it won’t
Wimp!
Agreed, Tim, it is revolting.
But these procedures are obviously used in order to turn people against capital pun.
A gallows or a guillotine is the way to go.
Talking of capital pun, here is the immortal Jake Thackray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvoajDAOHkc
Well, that didn’t go where I thought it would!
I’ll bet! But it’s a cracker, innit!
Jake based his style of singing and playing pretty firmly on Georges Brassens (an excellent model to emulate).
Brother Gorilla, classic. My flatmate at Uni had this on tape, which was my indroduction to JT.
My personal choice would be nitrogen asphyxiation, but in a normal(ish) room and not how the US execution method does it with a face mask.
But these procedures are obviously used in order to turn people against capital pun.
Disagree, I think it’s the opposite. They’re trying to make it a sanitised death rather than something gruesome so as not to put off the waverers. Look at the fuss when Gary Gilmore wanted to be executed by firing squad. People didn’t like the idea of someone having to pull the trigger and the bloody mess it would leave.
Ever seen Bangkok Hilton ?
That’s the way to do it !
No, but I’ve just seen the execution on YouTube. Brutal but effective.
yes… “sanitised” and they’re using Nembutal as the main agent… Supposed to shut down the respiratory system.
Which is….hilarious , in a sense… because that stuff is used as “humane” method to brainfry test critters when in-vivo dissection is needed…
Because it completely fries the higher brain centers, but preserves the autonomic “lower” brain functions. Which includes the breathing reflex, sort of, regularly…
Which give you the time to do the cutty-snippy-preppy work in a couple of *hours* instead of minutes/seconds…
They either didn’t use enough Nembutal ( imagine overdosing in an execution… you’d have the Rising of the Lawyers, and think of the costs!!….) , or they don’t follow up with something actually lethal when the executee is brainfried and *can’t* notice a thing. No higher brain functions possible…
Botulin comes to mind… Very effective paralytic and *will* shut down the autonomous system rather effectively..
But hey… As noted…. Death designed and administered by Committee is bound to be a bodge job.
My guess is someone couldn’t find a vein.
I thought it was always a three stage process; sedative, then muscle relaxant, then potassium chlorde to stop the heart?
That really would be ouch if you missed a vein.
It varies by state, the usual horde of (ongoing) lawsuits as to which substances can be used by the Usual Suspects, methods of administering, etc…
There isn’t one approach, and in most cases the combinations would work *in theory* , because actual executions using this method are pretty rare to begin with, so there’s not a lot of actual *proof* a given method works as advertised, *especially* when actual mental and physical stress would be involved which would kick in the entire range of Survival Protocols in the body..
A sequence of [general aneasthetic], followed by 2-3 x LD50 Nembutal, followed by 2x LD50 Botulin A/B/E would be “humane” in any sense an execution can be.
After the anaesthetic kicks in you won’t notice anything anymore… And then you literally can’t, and then your body shuts down.
And *because* it’s effective, cheap, and foolproof…. it’ll be challenged in courts for the next century…. Because the US.. And meal tickets for Lawyers and Activists.
Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman all waiting to be executed by guillotine.
Englishman lays down, but the blade stops half way. After three attempts they let him go. Scotsman, the same thing happens, so he goes free too.
The Irishman lays down and just before they drop the blade he says “Hang on, I can see where it’s going wrong”.
“Oi tink Oi see where your problem is, squire.”
Injection + nitrogen asphyxiation?
I think that’s Leonard Cohen, not Jake Thackray.
Is it only me who finds this gruesomely funny on the same day Esther Rantzen dies naturally?
No, that’s actually laugh out loud funny.
It certainly brings home that the state isn’t capable of making assisted suicide a nice calm and peaceful death as many would have us believe.
No not just you. The sad thing about Ms Rantzen is that she could have left this life with a positive legacy for broadcasting and public service over things like Childline. However she’s tainted her own post death legacy by supporting both attempts to bring about legal assisted suicide/state murder.
For you, maybe. For me, one of the few things good about her.
Like in Canada?
Nah, she was a loud, shallow, egocentric media ‘do-gooder’. If your legacy is some “helplines”, you might as well have stayed quietly at home.
I agree with your appraisal. The “nice caring Ester” was a gig the BBC gave her. Same as they did Savill.
How I do agree with on the assisted dying issue. What I don’t agree with is the government of medical professionals having anything to do with it at all. People against it are the “we will prevent you doing what you want” faction, despite it not harming anyone else. Especially libertarians. But not surprising. Free to anything we agree with is what libertarianism is.
I’m less concerned with individuals who suffer from appalling illnesses deciding to off themselves, I’m opposed to the Government controlling it and it being managed by Britain’s truly awful NHS. The proposed legislation was a charter for state cock up and abuse, the ability of greedy relatives or abusers to remove an inconvenient person and was legislation with virtually zero safeguards.
Self-promoting do-gooders remind me of Pascal’s aphorism;
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”
Do they try again? I thought they got one go, and if you survived, then you’re in luck.
No idea where I got that idea from though.
Maybe Victorian England? If the rope broke in a hanging, the criminal was reprieved. God had intervened to save him.
John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee (Fairport Convention). That dates me 🙂
One of my favourite memories of Fairport was when they appeared on OGWT promoting this album and Dave Mattacks was wearing a t-shirt reading “Bored Stiff”.
Government can’t even kill somebody.
We didn’t have this problem in 1950.
Gamecock assumes any drugstore has 50 things that could kill you. Yet a specially concocted ‘lethal injection’ won’t?
There’s a lot of things will kill you. But few of them reliably & painlessly.
But it remains, our grandparents had no such problem.
And general anesthesia will take care of painlessly.
Anaesthesia awareness had an incidence rate of around 1 in 3,000, as of 2005. It used to be about 7% back in the 1970s.
https://www.bjaed.org/article/S1743-1816(17)30523-1/fulltext
It used to be about 7% back in the 1970s.
That’s not how I read what your link says. It says when nitrous oxide was used alone in the 1970s, 7% experienced anaestjesia awareness. Which is unsurprising given the low potency of nitrous oxide…
Fair point. We would need to know whether and how often N2O was used alone.
Point is, ‘reliable and painless’ was judged by different standards in our grandparents time.
Of course, someone might argue that an appropriate method of execution would be to drag her out into the woods at night, strip her naked, slash her more than a hundred times with knives, carve a bloody pentagram into her chest, and then bash her repeatedly in the head with a big lump of concrete.
The problem is that because death is politically controversial and legally fraught, the authorities revert to bureaucracy, protocol, and compromise as a way of safely avoiding all responsibility or blame. The stupid rule-following happens because the lawyers will happily spend 30 years defending an amateur for inflicting death-by-concrete-block and see nothing wrong in that, but have no mercy on a professional for botching a death-by-anaesthetic.
Incentives matter.
The reason it takes decades in the US for administration of death penalty is because the government underfunds the judicial system.
Once the court issues the sentence, a parade of appeals follows. Which is fine and proper, though there might be more steps than needed. So what happens is when an appeal is filed it takes a couple of years to get a hearing, because the court docket is backed up. If that appeal fails, they file the next level of appeal, and that takes more years.
So, some in government say there should be no death penalty, because it takes too long. The same government that makes it too long.
No, it’s the US lawyers
No doubt the appeals process has taken 30 years to be completed, what with all sorts of mad theories dreamed up by lawyers whose real desire is to get capital punishment banned.
Also likely why the only scheme that’s allowed is so ineffective. Decapitation works 100% of the time, but that’s considered inhumane or something.
No, no, no. The longer they can keep the appeals going, the more money they make. Don’t make the mistake of thinking lawyers are taking a principled stand!
South Carolina used a firing squad twice in 2025.
[Yes, both perps died on the spot.]
The French used the guillotine because it is quick, effective and humane. Here we used the axe. Humane, maybe, but not if Jack Ketch is your executioner.
Maybe execution is too drastic a term. Maybe “involuntary assisted dying” is more gentle and inclusive.
The opposition to the death penalty is so effective that they really are able to delay its implementation for 20 or 30 years. That will probably not change. It is also a bit inconsistent of conservatives to disdain government as generally incompetent but think that this is one thing it gets right, though the incompetence seems to have been on full display here.
Conservatives should consider trading it off against some other policies that they want.
I think that the death penalty is more humane than life imprisonment but the US lawyers have done their worst to make it the same. Living for 30-odd years on death row waiting to be executed for a murder must be worse than dying.
Not so sure. The inmate has to approve of the appeals. Theoretically. Their choice for the continuation.
That does not mean that 30-odd years on death row, with no hope of freedom, is worse than execution.
That is not for us to decide.
So what do we call them? Placebo injections?
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2026/10/01/christa-pike-granted-all-female-execution-team-botched-lethal-injection/
Christa Pike Granted All-Female Execution Team Before Botched Lethal Injection
Coincidence?
DEI hires.