Christa Pike's Executioners Had Three Words After She Lived

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is HiddenKillers With Tony Brueski.

Tony Brueski (0:12)

Let's talk more about the botched execution, shall we? And this is an interesting piece, and I wanted to do some research here, not just be outraged, there's plenty of outrage in here. But let's do a little connecting of the dots, because this stuff just keeps happening. So rather than the state's an idiot, they're incompetent, yeah, I mean, they are. That's established. But why? Why? What is going on here that this is seemingly such a high probability of failure, of a botched execution?

So I did a lot of research and here's what I've come up with. I'm going to try and explain it to you the best I can. I'd love for your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube as we work our way through this.

I think you may have a better understanding. It doesn't, again, this is one of those, I'm not standing up for the poor decisions or the bad ways this is working, but I'm explaining to you how the system currently functions and why. And it, you know, when you hear statements like, they did everything that they're supposed to do, they might not be lying. The bar is that low.

That's a red flag. That's a, we need to do something about the citizens.

Because the people who are following the existing rules are telling you the existing rules do not function to be effective for what the outcome you're hoping to have take place.

Just after 11 o'clock on the night of September 30th, 2026, the Tennessee Department of Correction put out a written statement. It said, the department has followed every step of the state's lawful established execution protocol. It said, the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. He was asking, well, why that didn't work? Just give her a little more. Put a pillow over her face. That's not how that works. When those sentences went out, Christa Pike had two full doses of phenobarbaryl in her body as she was still alive. Media witnesses had listened to her snore from behind a closed curtain until a warden ordered them out. Everybody out! It didn't work right! Quick leave! At 853, her attorneys say she arrived at the hospital with both arms swollen, burned and blistered and was put on a ventilator. The state's position in writing was that it did everything right. Except for fighting a vein.

And here's the truth.

I believe them. The rule book they followed was written to let this happen. By people who'd been warned and the warnings go back to the day the method was invented.

So how does a state end up with a way of killing people that no doctor will touch, no drug company will supply, and no regulator has ever approved? And why does it keep choosing it anyway? I mean, if you think of it in some ways, it's like saying, okay, we've decided we're going to let lions eat the people on death row now. We're just lions, okay? Implement the lions.

Yeah, hi, I work over at the prison, County Zoo. I know you guys got some lions there. I was wondering, could we borrow them for an afternoon? Or do you do anything where we can maybe do like a private showing? Don't bring any of the kids in, but can we like just put somebody in the lion cage for an hour or two? And what are you talking about? We're not going to do that. I know. But like my boss is the government says, I got to get a lion and we got to like execute a prisoner. What? Yeah. Can you help brother out? Yeah. It's.

Hi, Joe Exotic, please. What up, brother? Yeah, Joe, about those big cats.

It's it's we're going to invent a way of how we're going to kill people. We're just we're just not going to really figure out how we're going to do this or who we're going to bring in to supply the things we need to kill the people with. And then when we have to kind of ragtag it together, we're going to be really surprised when it doesn't work out very consistent over the next several decades. But it sounds a lot more humane by saying lethal injection than electric chair. Old Sparky, doesn't it? Sounds better than firing squad, even though both of those are far more effective. Than lethal injection and far easier to accomplish as well.

So to figure this out, to understand this, we got to go back to when it was invented. Lethal injection was invented in an afternoon in Oklahoma. Sounds like a lovely day. 1977, a state legislator named Bill Wiseman went looking for something more humane than the electric chair, and he asked the State Medical Association for help designing a death by drugs. And the doctors said, no, we're not going to do that, you idiot. We're doctors. We take the Hippocratic oath. First, do no harm. What the fuck? Oh, you're a senator. Isn't your oath like, do harm anyway, you possibly can and ignore the voting population? And it's a little different. Oh, wait, you don't you don't pledge that you just do it that way. OK.