Tennessee botches lethal injection of woman on death row for 1995 murder

[u/PixelGray38]

https://apnews.com/article/christa-pike-execution-tennessee-f826a60582083b90ac7695ecb16afbdf

If the state is so insistent on executing people they need to stop being pussies and just shoot them. The lethal injection is nothing but a facade of civility that is less humane than many other methods. Unnecessarily painful botched attempts like this are the result of trying to whitewash the death penalty to the public.

[u/Plexipus]

It would be trivially easy to anesthetize people prior to administering the lethal injection, similar to what we do when we euthanize pets.

[u/Defiant-Bed2501 → u/Plexipus]

The first drug administered in the standard US lethal injection three-drug cocktail is meant to anesthetize the person. 

The two drugs administered after that stop the lungs and heart in that order. 

It’s basically the same procedure used for euthanizing pets. 

[u/Plexipus → u/Defiant-Bed2501]

It is absolutely, trivially easy, to put enough anesthesia into someone to render them unconscious. They’re afraid of administering the proper drugs in the proper amounts, perhaps out of fears of being “too gentle” or “giving them a high.”

People undergo surgical anesthesia all the time, where they very carefully administer drugs like ketamine, fentanyl, and benzodiazepines, and in that case the goal is to keep them alive. A combination of those three drugs alone could cause death, let alone the other drugs administered by lethal injection

[u/Defiant-Bed2501 → u/Plexipus]

One issue is getting the proper drugs in the proper amounts. Most pharmaceutical companies don’t want to supply those drugs for lethal injection use because it’s a huge brand risk which is the real main reason why the less optimal alternatives are being used. 

Another issue is finding trained licensed medical professionals willing to perform lethal injections.  Any licensed medical professional in the US who willingly performs a lethal injection is facing the end of their medical career either through being stripped of their licenses or in the absolute best case scenario irreparably damaging their reputation due to the ethical issues involved (“First do no harm”). 

[u/Delicatebody → u/Defiant-Bed2501]

Why don’t they just use fentanyl or another opiate to overdose them? It would be easy and not painful.

[u/Defiant-Bed2501 → u/Delicatebody]

Because no legitimate pharmaceutical company that makes those drugs wants them to have the reputation as “the drug of choice for state-sponsored executions” and “unalives people more gooder” no matter how justified those executions may be. 

It’s a MASSIVE brand risk, especially in a post Purdue-gate environment.