The unfortunate events of Christa Pike’s failed execution by the State of Tennessee has swept across the globe in the past week, raising controversy left and right, leading to the state’s prisons chief to resign. Tennessee is known for its extreme secrecy when administering executions, so what really happened and what happens next?

Pentobarbital is the sedative used for lethal injection executions, administered directly into the bloodstream to suppress the central nervous system and speed up the process of execution. It was reported that Pike’s lawyers had notified the prison staff prior to her execution date that she had a condition that made execution by injection a difficult task. In the event, the state's executioners administered two rounds of lethal injection to no avail, leaving Pike in agony and telling staff that her arm was “burning”, and questioning whether this was supposed to happen.

Her recovery at this moment has been noted as 'remarkable,' as she has been taken off a ventilator and is able to eat and walk with assistance. Her case is now in uncharted territory, as Pike is believed to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt via lethal injection. As a result of this, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has ordered a pause on all executions scheduled for the rest of the year giving time to find out what went wrong in this case.

In the meantime, her lawyers are pushing for her sentence to be downgraded to life without parole, noting if they try to administer another execution onto Pike, it could rapidly turn into ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Only 27 of 50 US states legally administer the death penalty, which raises debate and questions as to whether this is a humane punishment or not. My own view is that capital punishment seems to be more of a merciful escape from a lifetime in prison, rather than a punishment itself. Others have argued in support of the death penalty, often citing the phrase ‘an eye for an eye’.

Proponents of capital punishment have suggested using a different method to ‘put her to death', with Senator Marsha Blackburn calling for the return of the electric chair - an exceptionally inhumane way to carry out the penalty.

In a particularly cruel twist of fate, Pike must now recover in hospital before the mechanism of and further attempt at her execution can be decided.

Judge I’Aesha Myles ordered that anything that was used during the execution, like IV lines, syringes, waste like packaging and labels, be preserved and maintained for evidence. The judge also ordered full documentation on Pike’s psychological condition before, during and after the event. This, it seems, is the state’s second failed execution attempt in 5 months.

Governor Lee has called for a third-party independent investigation before going ahead with any new punishments.

Pike’s legal team had earlier raised serious concerns surrounding the state’s officials failing to account for any emergency during the execution. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) statement outlined a previous failed execution in May, which saw Tony Carruthers facing lethal injection. The team had failed to set an IV line for Mr Carruthers. That execution was halted and a one-year reprieve was issued, but Governor Lee refused requests to pause future executions despite concerns about the number of botched executions in the past. This is a serious liability, knowingly allowing executions to continue despite the lack of success with the injection. The DPI statement also reveals that Tennessee officials have maintained extreme secrecy about their execution procedures, as they refuse to answer reasonable questions, are unwilling to accept responsibility for their mistakes and also refuse to disclose the source of the drugs they obtain, or how they are stored and tested.

Tennessee largely carries out these executions in secret, so the public only finds out what went wrong through witnesses, whose observations are limited by 'privacy' curtains around the detainee.

If the state decides to pursue the death penalty after Pike is discharged, and once the moratorium lifts, it is legally possible for them to try a second lethal injection, or even the electric chair, as per the laws in the State of Tennessee.

The family of the victim Pike murdered in 1995 called the execution a ‘mess’. Whether the public supports the death penalty or not, surely this ‘mess’ would be better described as inhumane. The fact that the state execution team refuse to disclose information to the public and do not let anyone know where they get the injections from, or how they test them, raises alarming concerns about the morality of their actions.

Firing Squad

Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, has today revealed they will be livestreaming the execution of a mass killer by firing squad, which is to be conducted by the military. Nidal Hassan, former army major and the man who opened fire at the Fort Hood base in Texas, killing 13 people in 2009, will be killed in December this year. Hegseth told the press that 'the public will be able to watch the execution on livestream because the public ‘need to know that there are serious consequences for these types of things’.

With the existence of capital punishment, and lifetime sentences without parole, does the public not already know there will be consequences for crimes of this nature? Are the botched execution of Christa Pike and the forthcoming shooting of Nidal Hassan signs of a new enlightenment, or a throwback to medieval vengeance, where murder rates were 10 times as high as today. Or, as so often happens, Science Fiction has predicted our future and we are starting to live out our own version of the Hunger Games?