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.”
It’s absolutely for the sake of the audience, and I don’t know anyone that reasonably argues otherwise.
Yeah the audience wants to not be confronted with their bloodlust. They want it clean and painless, just a quick “no more bad guy” rather than the viceral reality we’re primed to experience when a life is ended