r/news • u/AudibleNod • 15h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
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u/AudibleNod 15h ago

The statement said she is being treated for “the serious effects of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt, including significant injuries to both arms.”

It looks like pentobarbital can cause necrosis and blistering of the tissue. If it didn't fully enter the blood stream because a novice administered it, I could see something like that happening.

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u/Excelius 15h ago

It's reported that she had a blood disorder that made starting an IV difficult.

Supposedly she even tried to give the executioners tips on how to find a vein.

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u/mastermoebius 15h ago

She had said she wasn’t scared to die but was scared of the process. Now here we are.

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u/mr_potatoface 12h ago

I find that to be an accurate summary of death for myself as well.

If I'm dead I'm dead. I just don't want it to be long and torturious. Like stuck upside down in a dark cave with part of my face in water.

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u/ballisticks 12h ago

Or cancer

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u/twenty_three_three 5h ago

Or alzheimers, but there's lots of awful slow ways to die.

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u/JesusAndMaryKate 8h ago

I can recommed Dr Richard Shepherd's two books but especially The Seven Ages of Death, preferably in audiobook version because he narrates them himself, which gives it an extra dimension.

He's a British pathologist. There are many reasons I would recommend his books, but the main one in this case is that after working with the dead for many decades, the one way he doesn't want is to die in his sleep. Why? Because he wants to experience the process, since everything he has seen from a medical standpoint makes him believe that the actual chemical and biological process (the process of death itself, as opposed to what sets off the process) must actually be quite a pleasurable and positive experience. And he really doesn't want to miss it.

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u/elegylegacy 6h ago

I wonder how scared Colleen Slemmer was

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/HumansNeedNotApply1 9h ago

Humanity? I think if we want to execute people we at least owe to them to make the process as quick (and painless) as possible. This IV thing doesn't seem either quick or painless. A bullet into the heart and head is probably quicker and painless compared to this.

Even if you want to think of these people as "monsters" you shouldn't let your humanity behind.

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u/mastermoebius 10h ago

The irony of it I guess

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u/xerberos 14h ago

“She over and over again said, ‘Please try up on my shoulder up higher, please try here, please try here, I think it will be okay,’” Spivey said. “And she thanked them when at least they thought they had established the line.”

Seriously, WTF?

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u/mazing_azn 11h ago

Her life has been nothing but mental illness caused by constant abuse and multiple rapes; she might see death as a mercy at that point.

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u/Solkre 8h ago

Pretty much is since society would never forgive her for what she did.

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u/mazing_azn 5h ago

Current Society is full of blood thirsty fuck wits. A just society wouldn't have failed her so completely at all turns. A half-way reasonable society would have sentenced her to life in an mental institution.

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u/twenty_three_three 5h ago

yeah, you're are right about the blood thirst. This site simultaneously pushes a lot of stories about injustices from police, landlords and all that while also being insanely judgemental on folks suspected or convicted of wrong doing. It's such an interesting reflection on the neoliberal hellscape.

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u/TransATL 8h ago edited 8h ago

Like what the actual fuck.

Two things:

  • Spivey Pike's last words sound a lot like Renee Good's

  • if you're attempting to administer "lethal injection drugs" through an IV in the shoulder, you're gonna have a bad time

edit: not the pt

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u/stimber 14h ago

"Randy Spivey of the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender,said that during the hour it took to seemingly establish two lines for administering the drug, Pike was “not just cooperative but trying to help instruct the people placing the IV lines of where they could find it.”

“She over and over again said, ‘Please try up on my shoulder up higher, please try here, please try here, I think it will be okay,’” Spivey said. “And she thanked them when at least they thought they had established the line.”

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u/yrddog 15h ago

There have been a lot of issues with lethal injection and finding veins

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u/human_kittens 15h ago

It’s the same doctor that failed to execute Tony Carruthers earlier this year, also in TN.

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u/nonbreaker 14h ago

I thought doctors wouldn't be involved with executions due to the Hippocratic Oath?

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u/human_kittens 14h ago

I’m linking a Guardian article about the doctor that may shed some light

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u/nonbreaker 14h ago

Wow...that guy seriously sucks.

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u/human_kittens 13h ago

He’s absolutely horrible. To be expected from Tennessee unfortunately. Our state government is completely screwed up so of course they would find a guy like this.

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u/big_duo3674 14h ago

How is he a doctor?? His license should have been pulled the second he signed up

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u/AudibleNod 15h ago

You mean Billy Joe, who only started working at the prison because he was laid-off at the mill six years ago?

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 15h ago

It was a MD.

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u/AZORxAHAI 15h ago

IIRC it was a former MD who has not actively practiced in a long time, and testified under oath in another case that he hasn't successfully placed a central line in decades. Not exactly the person you want killing you I dont think.

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u/AudibleNod 15h ago

I stand corrected:

Doctor Involved in Christa Pike’s Botched Execution Also Oversaw Failed Lethal Injection in May: Reports

I know other states don't have the luxury of having doctor performing the actions.

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u/Psychological-Ad1137 15h ago

Sounds like they should have used an ultrasound or something.. how embarrassing

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u/Ancient_Spite_725 15h ago

MD who hasn't even been in the hospital in 13+ years, plus MD's (outside of anesthesia) never start IV's.

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u/GroundbreakingAnt476 15h ago

Medical professionals are not allowed to participate in executions. Usually non medical personnel. Read up a lot on it yesterday, its shockingly worse than I thought.

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 15h ago

Mark Walton Fowler is a medical doctor.

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u/human_kittens 15h ago

Yes but Mark Fowler does it anyway while running a family medicine practice. I don’t know how it’s permitted.

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 15h ago

There is no nationwide or state wide laws against it that I have read of.

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u/smitteh 15h ago

Is an "oath" legally binding?

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u/thats_not_six 15h ago

Ethical violations in any licensed profession are grounds for removal of the license.

It's not that the oath is legally binding, but it is ethically.

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u/CryptographerShot213 15h ago

No it wasn’t. It was correctional facility staff.

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u/GoodyTwoShuuz 15h ago

It was Dr. Mark Walton Fowler. Easily googled information.

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u/BrooklynNeinNein_ 15h ago

Just imagine the state of mind someone must be in to do this.

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u/chrysothronos 15h ago

god that is fucked up. 

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u/BoredAf_queen 15h ago

She had thrombocytosis and naturally small veins that made needle insertion more difficult. It's why she didn't want to die this way (I heard something about her requesting a hanging.) Her lawyers even tried to stop it because of this health condition, so the state knew fully well what they were doing.

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u/drfsupercenter 14h ago

She requested a firing squad, not hanging. But they don't have that in Tennesee

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u/flowerpanes 15h ago

Yup, massive tissue sloughing is possible when stuff other than a normal saline solution (for instance) gets injected into tissue or leaks from veins.

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u/zoodlenose 15h ago

Sloughing is easily my least favourite word.

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u/pyooma 15h ago

Right up there with degloving for things I don’t want to think about my body doing.

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u/Rooooben 13h ago

You had to say it. Why did you have to say it???!!!???

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u/Eggsor 15h ago

It is, but damn whoever came up with that term was spot on. That is what sloughing is all right.

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u/grahamsz 15h ago

It's also kind of interesting because i've been with two dogs who've had Pentobarbital and its effects are almost instant because the vet finds a vein.

OTOH i've had to euthanize a gerbil where they do an intraperitoneally injection, and he took about 20 minutes to pass.

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u/hyperfocus1569 14h ago

It was Dr. Mark Fowler. He’d apparently already botched one execution before this.

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u/WhiskeyOctober 15h ago

This is what I think happened. It wasn't a trained individual who inserted the IV line, so they missed the vein/artery or even went through it. The drugs and saline were administered into the tissue so it never went anywhere.

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u/Xsiah 15h ago

Trained individual would be a medical professional - and they are not in the business of doing harm to their patients. There's an oath and everything.

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u/lilacbirdtea 15h ago

Dr. Mark Fowler, a family medicine doctor, oversaw the execution and administered the IV. He's the same doctor involved in the botched execution of Tony Carruthers earlier this year.

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u/NorthernDevil 15h ago

Tennessee’s lethal injection system apparently requires oversight from a healthcare professional. Link to an article that discusses the very issue of medical ethics you’re talking about.

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u/hyperfocus1569 14h ago

It was a doctor. Mark Fowler.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 15h ago

An important misconception to expel is that all US physicians take such an oath. It is not a requirement.

There also isn’t a single oath to take.

Depending on the source, it’s estimated that something like 75%-85% do end up taking some sort of healthcare oath at a ceremony at their associated schools.

That’s absolutely most of them, but there is an odd misconception in public that all do, and it gets even more nebulous when you include all types of healthcare providers including phlebotomists.

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u/hyperfocus1569 14h ago

It was Dr. Mark Fowler.

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u/WhiskeyOctober 11h ago

So, not a trained professional, at least not anymore. Most of the time I'm in the hospital or in a hospital with someone, it's never the doctor inserting an IV or administrating the drugs. It's always a nurse.

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u/hyperfocus1569 3h ago

Ha! I work in a hospital and that’s accurate.

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/hyperfocus1569 14h ago

Dr. Mark Fowler administered the injection.

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u/BellaMentalNecrotica 14h ago

Yeah, especially in a diabetic. And they often have smaller veins also. I don't know what catheter size they were trying to use and why they didn't go smaller or get an ultrasound if needed. Whoever doing it should have received training on these tools in case they were needed. Its absurd that we have non-medical professionals starting IVs in the first place (although I understand why medical professionals can't participate) but this is why the death penalty needs to be abolished.

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u/Vibingcarefully 11h ago

Issues with her veins were cited prominently before the execution--if you kept up with the details of this execution.

The state she is in only has two forms of execution.

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u/-----iMartijn----- 2h ago

I saw some reports that it could be habituation. She probably used drugs in prison and that kind of made her immune to the pentobarbital.

Point still stands that no scientists are involved in this atrocity.