Christa Pike’s Lethal Injec­tion Failed. How Did It Hap­pen?

The failed exe­cu­tion of Christa Pike is not the first time Ten­nessee has strug­gled to car­ry out a death sen­tence by lethal injec­tion, rais­ing ques­tions about the drug at the cen­ter of the pro­ce­dure and prompt­ing some politi­cians to con­sid­er alter­na­tive forms of exe­cu­tion.
Before Pike, no inmate in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty had sur­vived after lethal-injec­tion drugs were admin­is­tered. Sev­en peo­ple had pre­vi­ous­ly sur­vived failed exe­cu­tion attempts. In those cas­es, how­ev­er, the exe­cu­tions were halt­ed because med­ical offi­cials failed to estab­lish an IV line, accord­ing to the Death Penal­ty Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter.
The con­tro­ver­sial drug — pen­to­bar­bi­tal — has been used by states across the coun­try and, dur­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s first term, to car­ry out death sen­tences. But Pike sur­vived two rounds of injec­tions Wednes­day night and was rushed to a hos­pi­ta …