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.”
You don’t gasp for air. I’ve seen controlled experiments with people on pure nitrogen and they don’t even notice what’s happening. They just get a little loopy and stop being able to function more and more.
It’s possible the people executed in this manner so far were all trying to hold their breath and hurting themselves, but it seems just as likely to me that they either were not using pure nitrogen or were sealing the face mask so none of the exhalations escaped.