New details of IV team’s attempts to find a vein shared by Pike’s lawyer ‘shocked and disturbed’ practitioners
Medical experts have expressed shock at the apparent incompetence shown by Tennessee’s execution team during the failed lethal injection of Christa Pike, the prisoner who survived a normally fatal dose of pentobarbital, which they say would be considered medical malpractice in any other setting.
New details emerged on Thursday of how Tennessee’s intravenous (IV) team struggled for almost an hour to set up a line into Pike’s arms through which she would be administered the fatal dose of sedative. A blow-by-blow account was released in legal proceedings from Pike’s lawyer, Randy Spivey, who was present inside the death chamber at her 30 September failed execution.
The technical procedures attempted by the four unidentified members of the IV team as they tried to find a vein, as described by Spivey, provoked alarm among medical experts. They said the standards applied appeared to fall glaringly short of anything that would be deemed acceptable in a medical environment.
What other motivator could there ever be in a death sentence?
In theory that should be carried out like euthanasia. Imagine someone putting down your dog and they cause all kinds of suffering because they like causing it and the animal is gonna be dead either way. It wouldn’t be acceptable either.
How is that anything other than vengeance?
You can put a person in prison for life to stop them from ever killing again.
There aren’t prisons for dogs killing, but there could be.
I’m not arguing pro death penalty. I’m actually hardline against it. I agree with your statement absolutely. Just stating that the malice part comes from the unnecessary cruelty, intended or not. In theory the protocol was designed to be painless and clinical, but they keep botching it but also keep doing it, which is in fact malicious even when applying Hanlons razor.