fix misplaced reply
I mean, you started the credential challenge, so what were you expecting? If you disdain it, there’s an easy solution, don’t start it. But you did start it, so you’re going to take the ride.
Are you suggesting that it is? Do you think Christa Pike would agree that the problem is well solved?
Presumably the BoC got some textbook form of the instruction, and obviously it wasn’t enough. I’m not sure if you’re suggesting it would’ve been solved by having a doctor do the training, but it wouldn’t. Only experience can fill in the gaps.
For the third and final time, learning the textbook easy case is about 1% of the problem. Yes I’m sure this looked very easy when you were practicing on your buddies in the garage or on cows who couldn’t complain or file a malpractice suit, but it’s a little different when you have to meet a certain human standard care for any person with any variation of anatomy that walks in the door. You don’t know enough to know what you don’t know.
Or, y’know, because the state holds the monopoly on violence and frowns on vigilantism (justifiably so, and fortunately so). I mean, come on, dude.
Right: but this is confusing “pain-free” with “cruelty-free.” I’m not in favour of either pain or cruelty, and certainly not adding to either, but clearly the method used here was unacceptable.
Since we don’t seem to be able to manage a solution that fits both law and self-image (“we are not barbaric!”), best admit that, as TN seems to have grudgingly, temporarily done.
There is the awkward situation where political concerns result in the anti death-penalty faction opposing low-suffering methods of execution because it also tends to reduce the spectacle. They rely on the lurid spectacle to illustrate the barbarity, under the sadly misguided delusion that the death-penalty supporting public can be shocked into changing positions.
The straightforward solution would be a captive bolt to the back of the head, at the brainstem. More instant than instant, more painless than painless. A gurney or chair could be devised to conceal the mechanism. But this wouldn’t satisfy anybody. The pros would find it too shocking to maintain the façade of civility, and the antis wouldn’t find it shocking enough to be politically useful to their cause. So we’re stuck in this weird liminal space of methods that look civilized on paper but often end up being torture sessions.
False choice between “You kill them” and “we kill them”.
Okay then, if it’s a false choice, or (as I maintain) a non-choice, maybe you shouldn’t have framed it as a coward’s choice. If you want to call someone a coward, just do that.
CNN’s bold 2ndary headline for the story is: “After being injected with two doses of pentobarbital, Pike was still alive, snoring loudly”
Yes, THAT’S the newsworthy takeaway: that she was unconscious and ungraceful in her slumber. I wonder if she farted loudly as well, as sleepers sometimes do. By all means, let’s focus on the bodily functions of an unconscious prisoner (and not the fact that she was still having them, despite the state’s efforts!) and not the state-sponsored murder of a woman who committed a crime 31 years ago as a teenager.
Not sure the SCOTUS’ actions regarding her appeal were entirely proper, either. But since they seem to be the last word on all things law these days, whatareyagonnado?
Moderating:
I think the discussion on “how hard is it to run an IV” has reached its course. Clearly, the state was unable to do it, for whatever reason. Please, everyone, discuss other aspects of this story.
I agree. But I wonder if the situation changes things. It’s not routine. In this case, it’s hitting a vein so they OD and die.
Nerves
It’s like, shooting at a target 10 feet out is not hard to hit. But if the target is now a living person looking at you, feels like that changes things.
I don’t know if this affects anything or not, but it would for me. I’d be nervous.
Veins
Finally, there’s also a difference between my “healthy” vein, and say, my sister’s thin worn out one that requires surgeon/specialist to stick (but only after the nurses swear they know what they are doing, try, and try, and try, and then flag it up the chain…every time). Not sure of the condition of this woman’s vein.
Late: Missed the Mod note. Not sure what to do but you can remove if it’s no longer helpful.
I must have been very unclear when I tried to discuss this.
Yes. “Missing the vein on purpose would mean that she wouldn’t die, not that she’d die more slowly and painfully.” Exactly the thrust of the speculation—that the injecting person deliberately missed so as to NOT kill her.
I don’t think I ever said anything about “d(ying) more slowly and painfully”
ETA - I started this thread talking about how the execution was failed twice. But it really was only 2 different vials of drug during one attempt. I repeated what I had read somewhere early on. Sorry.
Although in general I have grave doubts about the Death Penalty, those in prison for Life can still kill- gang leaders order executions, fellow prisoners are shanked, guards are killed, escapes happen, and mistakes release the wrong prisoner.
This case had a particularly heinous murder- senseless and added torture. But I would not try to execute her again, despite the seriousness of her crimes. Enough is enough. I am not even sure that if I was on her jury, I would agree to the Death Penalty.
Apparently, she’s in critical condition (from a NY Times update):
A lawyer for the death row inmate Christa Pike said she was in critical condition and receiving lifesaving medical care on Thursday, a day after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her. Ms. Pike survived two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital in what was the state’s second bungled execution this year.
Am I the only one kinda barking a dry laugh when I read that she is “receiving lifesaving medical care”?
Looks like something out of a “Catch-22” type novel…
Just goes to show how barbaric the death sentence really is.
Scratch that. It is not out of “Catch-22”. It is out of Kafka.
Right down to his darkest stories, like “In The Penal Colony”…
And literally out of the USA, a land where evolution was stopped in its tracks.
What happens if the person fights and thrashes around? Even if they try to restrain the person’s arm, the person would still be able to twitch and move enough to make getting the needle into a vein a big challenge. With how hard it is to get a vein into a compliant patient, it seems like it wouldn’t take too much effort for the person to make that task much harder or impossible.
If she suffered brain damage due to this botched attempt, it is likely she can be found “incompetent to stand execution” (Ford v Wainwright)