Attorneys say Pike was set to be taken off life support before she woke up, as judge orders officials to preserve evidence

Christa Pike awoke “angry and confused” after surviving two lethal injections, her attorneys said on Wednesday, as a judge ordered Tennessee state officials to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution.

Pike, 50, was taken to hospital unconscious but alive from Tennessee’s execution chamber last Wednesday after two supposedly lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

She was declared brain dead on Monday, her attorneys said, and her team was informed of plans to remove her from life support the next day. “But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone … Christa woke up and began talking,” Randy Spivey, one of her lawyers, said at a press conference on Wednesday. He was told her first words were “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”

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What kind of 3rd rate doctors declared her brain dead?

It’s like she hit the jackpot of incompetence.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 day ago (8 children)

    Has someone tried torturing her, cutting a pentagram into her chest, then crushing her skull?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    I mean they are torturing her

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  • [+] -8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Eh, it's a huge gradient. Playing a pop song over and over is a form of torture. How about "did someone try torturing her like she did her victim?"

    This bitch has a lot further to go before I call it "torture". She's being inconvenienced.

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  • [–] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 child)

    Does being raped multiple times as a teenager count for credits? What about growing up around literal feces? Can she transfer her own previous torture credits to her current portfolio to balance it out?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    You know, a giant skull-crusher might actually be the preferable form of execution. Imagine one of those big hydraulic pile driving hammers. Just imagine a human skull at the impact point. Imagine not literally using one of those machines, but an execution device built around such a mechanism.

    Grizzly as hell, but honestly, I don't think we should factor the comfort of the execution audience into this. The state is murdering someone. The law may have judged this person worthy of being murdered, but they are still being murdered. Let it be as physically gruesome as it is morally.

    And why the giant head-crusher? Because it would be the perfect method from the condemned's point of view. It's instant and completely painless. The skull is flying apart like Gallagher's watermelon before the pain signal can even be processed. This beats even the guillotine, which gave the victim a few last seconds of horror, as they experienced the pain of the blade and the experience of being a head falling into a basket. Also, it's pretty much idiot proof. You don't have to worry about a clumsy sheriff-playing-as-doctor to administer a cocktail of medications. You check if the machine runs before the execution, but otherwise there's no real way to fuck it up.

    In theory nitrogen asphyxiation is the ideal way to do things. No pain. Just a gradual tiredness followed by sleep and death. But then you have to worry about nitrogen leaking out of a chamber and asphyxiating the observers.

    Or Hell, if we really could get over ourselves, the ideal method would probably just be massive doses of opioids. No real way to screw that up. In terms of fuck-ups, worse that happens is they get underdosed, they don't stop breathing, and you dose them again while they're asleep. But we don't like the idea of murderers being able to die in a state of medicated bliss and permanent sleep, so that's right out.

    Honestly, a giant head crusher would be far more humane than our current methods.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago

    The problem with the guillotine could be solved just by making it chop at the base of the skull rather than the neck. That would cut the brain in half, top and bottom, right through the grey matter. I'm pretty sure that would be instant lights out.

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  • [–] 1 point 20 hours ago

    massive doses of opioids. No real way to screw that up.

    You still need medical professionals to administer them and it might fail depending on the state of the veins of the person to be executed.

    But I agree that it would probably more human than whatever the fuck they are using currently, where they basically drown due to fluid buildup in the lungs.

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  • [–] 49 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    It will turn out the double-blind studies on this lethal injection were all done on male patients.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

    She has a medical condition that makes it difficult to locate a vein with a needle, so it's likely a majority of the drug administered were injected into her arm muscles instead, which slowed the diffusion enough to save her. She and her attorney warned the state this scenario was likely to occur because of that medical condition, and they ignored her and did it anyway.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    This is increasingly digusting, barbaric and inhumane. WTF are we trying to prove as a species? Right now we are worse than the worst people.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 day ago (13 children)

    My one misunderstanding of this is that we now allow euthanasia for people who are absolutely going to die from chronic illness in some states. They are provided a mixture of stuff to put you to sleep and then stop the heart. If this is something that is excepted and works well with possibly minimal pain then why is it not used as a replacement to this clearly awful way of being put down? We even continue to try and find better ways, but I never see that one talked about.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    It's because judicially approved murder is extremely unpopular in educated and competent circles.

    Meaning anyone willing to take part in the affair is most likely wholly undercompetent to try.

    Not only are the vast majority of doctors and nurses personally against it, but even the few that aren't won't do it because the medical associations would have a hell of a time revoking the executioner's licence.

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  • [–] 4 points 21 hours ago

    Not to mention that all the big pharmaceutical companies of the world won’t sell their meds to states using them for execution. I highly doubt they could even get the drugs required for assisted suicide.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Thanks for the insight. I was just going off of a few documentaries ive seen years ago that followed a few people that went through the process. I dont remember who it was that helped, but they did seem knowledgeable and able to provide this kit that basically assisted with terminating their life. It all seemed pretty peaceful compared to what they do for executions so it just didnt really make sense to me as to what they used.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Okay, there might be a misunderstanding so I'd just like to check.

    Judicial murder is this death penalty exacution stuff. Someone does something bad and a judge tells them he'll have them killed off for it.

    Voluntary euthanasia is different. It's where the person themselves wants to end their own life.

    Medical ethics say "do no harm" among some otger thigs as well, and the modern interpretation is that a doctor can help with voluntary euthanasia in certain cases. Usually there's a government-mandated checklist to decide there's less "harm" in helping the person leave this world behind that there would beto let them suffer in their chronic ailments. And this is only for some places (jurisdictions). Adoption of voluntary euthanasia is pretty slowgoing.

    Medical associations in the US specifically do not want anything to do with executions. They bar their members from taking part in them. The main argument is that the people on "death row" are healthy and taking part in their killing goes against the "do no harm" doctrine.

    However, nothing can truly stop a determined medical professional from taking part in an execution. The "only" consequebce of doing so is losing their licence at the medical association (if registered). Since registration and membership are needed to be able to work in the field, there's a huge financial incentive against it.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 day ago (6 children)

    Medical professionals typically refuse to have anything to do with executions. It kinda goes against the Hippocratic oath.

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  • [–] 3 points 22 hours ago*

    its usually done by prison staff, that arnt doctors, medical docs and nurses wont risk losing thier license or livelyhood too, because you can report nurses and doctors to thier respective licensing boards for unethical pratices, especially if its a high profiled case. probably did something janky, by learning from phlebotomy classes.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Only about half of doctors take the oath at all, and there are many, many modern versions tailored to their individual goals and beliefs.

    While the majority want nothing to do with the entire field of "justice", it's easy enough to find someone that really wants to be part of it.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)
  • [+] -2 points 1 day ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    From the videos I saw it actually has a line in there that if this method doesnt work then electric chair is the next option. Considering what happened though it will be years and years of appeals and my guess is she just dies naturally in jail. Guess well see if her lawyers can pull off something crazier though.

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  • [+] -7 points 2 days ago

    unable to move arms

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