The lone woman on Tennessee’s death row was still alive after she was administered two lethal injections, her lawyer said in a motion seeking to halt her execution Wednesday night, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.

At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said “executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals” and Christa Pike was “still alive and snoring,” her lawyers said in a federal court filing.

They said Pike “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat” and that curtains to the death chamber “have gone down twice.”

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[–] 1 point 1 day ago

I'll take a bullet every time.

I've heard too many stories about prolonged and/or agonising death.

No. Give me the device humans have used millions upon millions of times to quickly and effectively end a life.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago

    The Tennessee Oblast, through massive red run deregulation, cheapened the drug to the point where it will fail.

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  • [–] 211 points 4 days ago* (6 children)

    This fiasco has been nothing but cruel and unusual punishment over and over again for this woman for a matter that should have been settled 30 years ago. Southern states make me sick - led by the "party of life" my ass. They don't give a single shit about "life" once that person is born.

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    [–] 34 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

    Just a reminder that Tennessee has botched so much of this case for decades. There's no doubt that this woman is guilty, but for fuck's sake, look at this from Wikipedia:

    Slemmer's mother repeatedly asked Tennessee authorities to return the fragment of skull for proper burial, but it remained in the state's possession as evidence. Authorities stated it would not be returned while the case remained open, awaiting Pike's execution. In a documentary that premiered September 2026 ahead of Pike's potential execution, Dead Woman Walking: Pike vs. Tennessee, Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, confirmed that after 16 years of fighting and writing letters, she had received the skull from the state of Tennessee but has still not received "the last piece of her daughter’s skull."

    Yeah, that's right, the State of Tennessee still has a piece of the victim's skull and refuses to give it back to the family. The people who tell you that this was satanic are keeping a piece of the victim's body as a trophy. Sounds like they would know...

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  • [–] 174 points 4 days ago (20 children)

    Every single thing about her case from the time of her arrest until now has been a complete fustercluck, it's no surprise the execution didn't work.

    She literally told them, her lawyers literally told them, that she has a medical condition that will prevent the lethal injection drugs from working, but they're so hell bent on murdering her that they could not just let her spend her life in prison. Yes, she brutally killed that girl, but the other two people who also brutally murdered that girl got life in prison for one, AND PAROLE for the other.

    I'm not suggesting she's innocent. She's not. But why does every court have such a hard on for killing the woman? Abolish the death penalty, and do not give the state the right to kill it's citizens. Please.

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    [–] 36 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    Sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me

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  • [–] 12 points 3 days ago

    Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the landmark majority opinion regarding lethal injection in the 2019 case Bucklew v. Precythe

    In a 5–4 decision split along ideological lines, Gorsuch ruled that the Eighth Amendment—which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment—"does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death"

    The ruling affirmed that under Supreme Court precedent, an inmate challenging a state's method of execution—even under unique, personal medical circumstances—must prove that a feasible, readily available alternative exists that would significantly reduce severe pain. Gorsuch ruled that Bucklew failed to provide the operational details necessary to show that nitrogen gas was a viable, easily implemented alternative for the state

    Gorsuch also used the opinion to criticize what he viewed as legal gamesmanship, pointing out that Bucklew had managed to delay his execution for more than two decades through continuous legal appeals.

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    [–] 7 points 2 days ago*

    TN is using 1 drug when the requirement is 3. It is gonna happen.

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  • [–] 70 points 3 days ago

    This country is an extremely dangerous combination of cruel and stupid.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    charly kirk only took one lethal injection and died. What a loser.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    Dude had a heart attack. The fuck you talking about?

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    [–] 29 points 3 days ago (10 children)

    I mean is it really more humane than a guillotine or are we just doing lethal injections to make those witnessing it feel more comfortable?

    As long as it's built properly a guillotine is pretty effective the first go around.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    It's absolutely for the sake of the audience, and I don't know anyone that reasonably argues otherwise.

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    [–] 70 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    State sanctioned murder is the most fucked up thing, except for state-sanctioned torture followed by murder.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

    "But your honor the sentence has indeed been carried out and state has no further business with client, I expect their release tomorrow "

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    [–] 43 points 3 days ago

    You'd think there'd be a sort of double-jeopardy thing in relation to lethal injections.

    Something like the old Western movie trope of how you can't be hanged twice.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 days ago (8 children)

    I’ve been hearing for years that it’s very hard for the government to find qualified doctors who will work with them on this technology or help administer it, and that makes it extremely hard to carry out reliably. This is far from an isolated incident.

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    [–] 19 points 3 days ago (10 children)

    The problem with lethal injection is that its a medical procedure requiring precision and specific, expensive drugs that...prison systems don't want to use either of

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  • [–] 13 points 3 days ago* (2 children)

    prison systems don’t want to use either of

    Every major F.D.A.-approved pharmaceutical manufacturer and several key medical supply companies have blocked the sale of their products for use in lethal injection executions.

    Like, imagine a line the Sackler Family won't cross because it's too unprofitable evil. That's where we're at on lethal injection drugs.

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    [–] 72 points 4 days ago (10 children)

    Jesus fucking Christ this is a country of sociopaths.

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    [–] 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    What a clusterfuck of a life.

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  • [–] 57 points 4 days ago (20 children)

    So killing her doesn’t work, they bring an ambulance, take her to the hospital, let her go back to prison for a year and wait for them to try again?

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  • [–] 45 points 4 days ago

    It this point, IMO, they've shot their wad and should take her to the hospital and if she eventually survives all this then stop trying to kill her period and either re-incarcerate her for some period (even life) or let her go. Having the state try to kill her, twice, and fuck up the whole thing, twice, seems like ample punishment to me. Yee haw!

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    [–] 24 points 3 days ago
    [–] 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)
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    [–] 26 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    Why does the article repeatedly call them 'lethal injections'. They were not.

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  • [–] 47 points 3 days ago* (2 children)

    The whole notion of lethal injections is the product of a sick and cowardly mentality in my view.

    I oppose the death penalty in general, but at least the gallows or the firing squad have the decency not to lie about what they are: the state violently ending someone's life in cold blood. The lethal injection is a perverse inversion of medicine, it exists solely to protect the moral blushes of the pieces of crap who carry it out. Only a profoundly immoral political culture could invent something so blatantly perverted in my view. I particularly loathe the concept for this reason:

    If executions are gruesome enough the people who order them haven't the stomach to pull the lever on the gallows, the correct response is to abolish the death penalty; not to sanitise it behind a ghastly pseudo-medical ritual which exists solely to allow those people to sleep at night. It is a coward's way to have the death penalty without being considered cruel and despotic, but it is in reality among the most cruel and despotic forms of execution. If executions are to take place at all (and I think they should not) they should be very public, very swift, and very traditional so people are forced to see what the death penalty actually is.

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    [–] 20 points 3 days ago

    We live in a clown state

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