Christa Pike, who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug last week during a botched execution in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking, her lawyers said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ms. Pike continues to receive critical medical care at a Nashville hospital, the lawyers said. The prognosis remains unclear, they said, but they expect a long recovery.
“Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time,” the lawyers said.
Ms. Pike, 50, is believed to be the first person to have survived doses of a lethal injection drug. She has been hospitalized since the execution attempt on Sept. 30, after it became clear to witnesses that she was still breathing after two doses of pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injection executions.
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The US Federal Government (excluding the military probbaly) is bad at everything it tries to do, including killing people.
So… Is this like a movie scenario where she gets to go free?
I mean death penalty opinions aside, does it make sense to give medical care to someone you’re trying to kill? What a weird world we live in.
it’s the doctors’ duty to keep her alive. They took the Hippocratic oath. It’s the state that is trying to kill her, not the doctors
I mean death penalty opinions aside, does it make sense to give medical care to someone you’re trying to kill? What a weird world we live in.
The rule of law still matters. While it might feel logical that someone just take a scalpel to an artery after the injection failed, the law says it has to be done in a specific manner. Anything else is (legally) murder. And healthcare professionals also have an oath to fulfill.
From what I understand, no. But her lawyer will probably argue another lethal injection attempt would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. So she may end up getting the electric chair. A grim fate regardless.
She committed a heinous crime but after surviving TWO executions, doesn’t this count as double jeopardy already?
Double Jeopardy is when you are charged for the same crime more than once. Like if you got a not-guilty verdict, so they charged you again for another go at a guilty verdict.
This is not an example of double jeopardy, it is an example of torture, in clear violation of the Constitution.
You are sorta right though. Her sentence should be commuted for being subjected to torture.
Yeah I know what double jeopardy is. She’s been tortured and probably should have her sentence reduced to life imprisonment.
Absolute insanity.
We need to end the barbaric practice of capital punishment.
I think it needs to be upped a few pegs.
Navalny and Prigozhin immediately come to mind.
But important detail:
I live in one of the “formally suspended” states (Oregon). Capital punishment is entrenched in the state constitution, but state officials have done their darn best to get around that. The governor commutes all death sentences to life imprisonment. The execution chamber and death row were both dismantled, and the state has no way to procure the drugs needed for lethal injection, the only approved method of execution. A “temporary” moratorium has been in effect for over a decade.
There hasn’t been an execution in Oregon in almost 30 years.
I’m not a huge fan of the barbaric practice of making parents pay through taxes for their child’s murderer to eat and live out their days watching TV and lifting weights.
I’m not happy about my taxes being used to murder innocent people they were convinced definitely did a crime, and a human life is worth more than cash.
Fortunately, you wouldn’t be paying for it. You pay taxes and the state decides what to do with the money. And imprisoning the few people on death row is just a drop in the bucket of what they have available.
Here’s some numbers. There’s about 50 executions in the US per year. If the annual cost of imprisoning someone is 100.000$, that’s 5 million per year. Per person in the US (say 340mio), that’s about 1.5cts. Granted, now that these people aren’t dying anymore, there’ll be more people to take care of. If they live 50 extra years, that’s 75cts each person in the US pays to keep them in the prison.
You are also not into this entire buddhism thing?
For the most part, I agree with you. But for the people out there who are serial murderers, serial rapists, serial child molesters, people who have done horrible, terrible things, we know for sure they did it, there’s no doubt about it, they admit to doing it, they swear they’ll do it again as soon as they get the chance…
Yeah, kill those mother fuckers. It’s a waste of time trying to rehabilitate them, a waste of money keeping them in a cage, and a danger to society to let them out. What else are you supposed to do with a problem like that?
multiple republican states and even the federal government are trying to make being transgender a sex offense and then push laws to kill all sex offenders. Do you understand what this says about the power capital punishment gives. Do you get how easily any “legitimate reason” can be abused
we know for sure they did it
It’s very disturbing what this caveat implies.
Agreed. Knowing for sure that they carried out the physical act should be the bare minimum to even consider the death penalty (assuming we can’t just get rid of it).
Generally it’s more expensive to execute someone due to all the appeals and other processes you have to go through.
There is no one so cartoonishly evil that it’s unsafe to even keep them in prison.
There is no one so cartoonishly evil that it’s unsafe to even keep them in prison.
Billionaires tho…
There’s an exception to every rule: Richard Ramirez is pretty fucking cartoony. Those vatos that caught him should have ended his ass on the streets.
Are people sentenced to death entitled to a different amount of appeals than those sentences for life?
My gut feeling is that access to lawyers matters more than the number of procedural steps available.
Death row inmates seem to have much better ability to be represented by pro bono attorneys’ who will go to the mat on every single hail Mary motion.
But that’s fundamentally a flawed argument. It’s more expensive becuase death penalty cases have more rights. Specifically in the US what is called “actual innocence” is not grounds for an appeal to a life sentence but is for a death penalty.
Ideally we would extend that everyone, not save a few bucks and justify continued incarceration of innocent people by noting “hey it’s not a death sentence.”
Imagine the scenario of an innocent person who can’t appeal becuase the trail was fair but would have been freed if they had been sentenced to death, but becuase of the judge or jury’s mercy, they are imprisoned for life.
That has happened here.
Not think a great argument for abolishing the death penalty since it fundamentally is just saying “it is way too expensive to let any prisoners appeal based on being innocent. We could save so much money if didn’t let anyone do that.”
idk have you seen Dr Morocco in Transformers Rescue Bots?? /s
Yeah except ALL the people who are executed because JUSTICE and later it turns out WHOOPS they were innocent all along. We thought for sure we got the right person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States
Pobody’s Nerfect, am I right?
For the most part, I agree with you.
You don’t agree at all.
we know for sure they did it
This is more difficult than it sounds. I’ll admit it’s much better than a few decades ago, but still… What if we’re wrong and we execute an innocent person? It’s not like this is unheard of, and the whole problem is fully avoidable by simply not killing people.
All other considerations aside, it’s just not worth it for such a permanent outcome.
What else are you supposed to do with a problem like that?
Do we have that problem? I went out today, seemed fine.
I don’t think the prisons are bursting at the seams with serial killers, it’s mostly pot-smokers.
And when years later evidence comes out exonerating someone who was executed, how much are you willing to pay the surviving relatives?
Another issue I don’t see discussed like, ever, is which option actually is more humane? We tend to assume death is the absolute worst thing we can do to someone, so anything other than death is at least second in line… but personally, I disagree. “Life in prison” has no rehabilitative goal, we’re just keeping them pinned in horrible living conditions with no objective other than to keep them living in horrible conditions. …which is torture. 24/7, until they eventually die anyway, which is still a death sentence, just one that dragged out over decades of torture.
So, we’re choosing between:
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Die.
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Torture, torture, torture, torture, torture, torture, torture, die.
…between the two, if I was the one whose fate was being decided here, I’d rather just skip the torture and die. But that’s ofc the arm-chair perspective of not being stuck in that situation: on any given day those self-preservation instincts kick in and we drag our own suffering out just for the sake of staying alive, cuz that’s just how we’re wired; but thinking of it here and now more objectively, yea fuck that, just kill me.
So the other factor to consider is whether inmates are even in a state of mind sound enough for them to make that decision for themselves, so even letting them choose on an individual basis is a bit fucked. Maybe we need to have them make that decision prior to sentencing, and place it in a sealed envelope or something; and if they checked the ‘just kill me’ box, but are now panicking after a guilty verdict: sorry duder, you’re panicking, we’re sticking with what you chose before sentencing.
Anywho, there’s no humane option in that dichotomy, but thinking of it as prolonged torture vs what is essentially a mercy killing paints a very different angle to the usual death vs imprisonment talking points.
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You are pretty barbaric.
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She’s doing better than Mitch McConnell.
Can you imagine, getting executed and then waking up in a hospital days later.
“You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, weren’t you?”
Ironically that opening sequence culminates in everyone on the wagon being brought to their planned execution.
“Aww, shit. Here we go again!”
And then being told, “That’s doesn’t count. We get a do-over. You still have to go back to jail.”
I feel like regardless of where you stand on the issue of capital punishment, everyone should agree that if the drugs got administered and it didn’t work that’s a double jeopardy kind of situation. But alas.
That seems like a good argument for not being able to attempt the execution again, but by default the offender in such a case should still remain in prison for life.
It’s there a law that states if you survive it, you get to live?
Yeah, there’ll eventually be a Silent Hill that starts just like this.
Ngl that sounds dope af. I’d play that
In a normal society this horrific sequence of events would be cause to reexamine what was done and determine if it’s appropriate for the state to continue murdering its citizens.
I mean, at least part of the problem is that nobody want to provide drugs to kill people. Most of the country moved way past executions a good long while ago.
They’ve got a shit govorner that must have gotten bored waging war on the state’s only African American majority city and decided to kill a woman to make himself feel better.
Unfortunately this is a normal society. The exception was a brief period where we were steady improving things for all our citizens and visitors, including our imprisoned, our institutionalized, etc. Historically those people have always been mistreated and abused with little to no regard and plenty of glee from sadists masquerading as the religious, those seeking justice, and those concerned for the safety of others.
They tried to execute her twice and within a week she’s already doing more than Mitch McConnell has done since he’s ‘returned’ to the Senate
Abolish it. It’s not the 19th century anymore.
This is so weird… I wonder if she woke up wondering if this is real since I feel like it would make no sense to her. Also that part about her being a survivor, come on really? I feel bad for how her childhood was, and that the other 2 got less of a sentance than her, but do I feel sorry for her or think of her as a victim? Nah not really. From what I read she will most likely get electicution, but there will be years of more fighting now and my guess is she just gets life since I think she will die naturally in jail before that next attempt ever happens.
If anything I feel bad for the family of the actual victim who sees all this and also see people showing Pike more sympathy over it. Meanwhile I remember hearing of 2 cases in the last year that were executions for innocent people that were not allowed to be reversed and ended up dying, those are the ones I really feel sorry for.
If I remember correctly, she said she has a condition which would probably make the lethal injection drugs ineffective. And she told them that.
The drug protocol was a massive single dose of pentobarbital, which is a barbiturate. Followed by a second backup dose of the same size if required.
This is a different and simpler protocol than the 3 drug combo of, like, midazolam, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. The barbiturates work solely off of sedative-like effects, and lethality is achieved by using a massive overdose.
This is what I’ve pieced together from news and court filings:
This drug works well if it gets into the blood stream. If it goes into the muscles and other parts of the body besides the veins, it doesn’t have its psychoactive sedative effects. The drug is very basic, as in high pH, so it causes burns.
Injecting not into vein also causes pain and swelling simply from mechanically forcing a largish volume of liquid into the body where there’s not a lot of free space to accept it.
So the story seems to be that the execution people struggled for a long time to get a good needle stick into a vein. The victim had prewarned them and the court that she has tiny veins, like a lot of people. It seems like they possibly gave up on the vein and just dumped two whole vials into what was effectively an intramuscular injection.
There was a witness report that one of the multiple needles that was removed from her arm was bent at a 90 degree angle.
Not the drugs, just getting IV placement. Which is common. You start taking about getting something like an intraosseous or a central line placed you well out of the expertise they staff those morons for and well into cruel and unusual punishment territory. Of course their lack of ability to place a PIV in so many of these cases already proved that. These idiots actually tried to continue the execution without a patent PIV line, just infiltrating alkaline and tissue toxic drugs into her arm with the associated local damage and hoping enough of the dose would get there in some sort of reasonable time frame. The only execution method unlikely to be botched remains the guillotine.
If it were me I think it would drive me insane. Just constant doubt about whether I’m dead or not. Or perhaps jumped universes.
She say anything?
Ouch
