Pike survived a lethal injection execution on Wednesday. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer.
Christa Pike, the woman who survived an execution attempt in Tennessee earlier this week, is on a ventilator as she receives care in the hospital, her lawyers said in a new statement Friday.
“Christa remains critically ill and is receiving medical care for the devastating effects of Wednesday night’s events,” the lawyers’ statement said. “She is critically ill, unconscious, intubated and receiving breathing assistance through a ventilator.”
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.”
Who is paying for all this care? The attempted execution seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. I’m not in favor of execution, but if you’re gonna do it, do it quickly and efficiently, as humanely as possible. We euthanize small animals all the time. Is this what they go through?
The most humane way is probably the most gruesome way, which is beheading. Every other “humane” execution contains suffering for a bit, while beheading immediately overwhelm your brain with signals and you’re very unlikely to feel pain. The other way is by hanging, which will likely snap your neck once you drop down and overwhelm your brain with signals, but the risk is if the rope doesn’t adjusted to the right height you’re gonna hurt your neck while suffocating.
So get your guillotine now.
Yeah, a cruel (or just incompetent) hangman would shorten the drop so that you die from slow strangulation instead of a quick snap. And given the cruelty is the point, I wouldn’t trust Tennessee to do it properly.
Guillotines are effective, but if not kept properly maintained, they can fail to completely sever the head. And there is some evidence that death is not instant.
Personally, if I was to choose my manner of execution, it would be firing squad. But the most effective would be sedative overdose or nitrogen asphyxiation, again only if done properly.