As both of my website’s regular readers know, I am opposed to capital punishment. We should not kill anyone unless it is absolutely necessary, and if we have a prisoner securely and permanently confined, to the point he is unable to resist his execution, then he is sufficiently helpless enough that it is no longer necessary to kill him.

But whether you support or oppose capital punishment, one thing is clear: we sure are inept and incompetent in administering it! The Volunteer State just tried, and failed, to execute Christa Pike, 50, for a gruesome murder she committed when she was 18. She was sentenced to death, while her 17-year-old boyfriend and accomplice was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; being a minor at the time of the crime, he was not eligible for capital punishment.

Though I am opposed to capital punishment, I have exactly no sympathy for Miss Pike. She was pleading for her life, which could have been another twenty or thirty or forty years locked in a cell for twenty-three hours a day. To me, that would be a fate worse than death, but I suppose it’s too easy for me to say, since saying it does not put me in the execution chamber.

From The New York Times:

Tennessee Fails to Execute Woman After 2 Doses of Lethal Injection

Christa Pike was convicted of murdering a classmate in 1995. It was not clear what went wrong in the execution or what her current medical condition was.

By Emily Cochrane and Ann E. Marimow | Wednesday, September 30, 2026 | Updated; THursday, October 1, 2026 | 8:58 AM EDT

A Tennessee woman convicted of murder survived two doses of lethal injection on Wednesday night before state officials suspended the execution and had her taken to a hospital for medical care, her lawyers said.

It was the second botched execution in the state this year.

The apparent failure came after dueling court rulings delayed the execution of the woman, Christa Pike, by about nine hours. The state had raced to go ahead with the execution before the day ended and to avoid having to reschedule.

In a pair of emergency legal filings, Ms. Pike’s lawyers said that while two syringes of pentobarbital, the lethal drug, had been administered, Ms. Pike had not lost consciousness. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.

It was not immediately clear what went wrong with the administration of the drugs, or what Ms. Pike’s medical condition was. In a statement late Wednesday, her lawyers said that she was at a nearby hospital but that they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials confirmed to a federal judge late Wednesday that Ms. Pike was receiving medical care.

There’s just so much wrong with that that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Miss Pike is receiving medical care, when the reason she is in the hospital is because the state botched the effort to kill her? Assuming she recovers, will she then be in a debilitated condition which will require the state to provide major medical care to keep her alive? Did she, like the Dread Pirate Roberts somehow build up an immunity to iocaine powder?

There are, of course, some realistic possibilities:

• The medical personnel could have seriously miscalculated how much pentobarbital was required to be lethal;
• The pentobarbital was contaminated or degraded in some fashion that prevented it from working as intended; or
• Someone deliberately or inadvertently provided the wrong execution drug.

Other problems could be imagined as well, but, as of now, we don’t know what went wrong. Except, of course, I do know what went wrong! As Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott said, “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

Executions in this country used to be carried out by hanging. But, we grew squeamish about that. First we moved executions indoors, out of public view. The last public execution was conducted on April 14, 1936, in Owensboro, Kentucky, where Rainey Bethea was hanged for rape. The actual execution went as flawlessly as possible, with Mr Bethea being pronounced dead after his neck was instantly broken. The designated executioner was drunk, and failed to pull the release trigger; a deputy then leaned into it to finish the job.

As people grew more squeamish, many states moved away from the common forms of execution, to go to lethal injection. The public supported capital punishment, but wanted the condemned put to sleep like an unwanted puppy in the pound. As states moved to lethal injections, some drug providers declined to sell the drugs used for executions; Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) has suspended all executions “while the commonwealth lacks access to the necessary drugs and a clear process through which to execute inmates.”

But rope is cheap, and can be bought at any hardware store. The methods for hanging are simple and well known, with the only hang-up being the proper calculation for the required ‘drop’ to break the condemned man’s neck, insuring an almost immediate death, yet not decapitate him.

I do not want us to execute anyone at all; I want to see all capital sentenced commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But if we are going to have executions, they should be public, so that the people can see what is being done in their name, and simple, as far beyond the ability of someone to f(oul) it up as possible.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution forbids the imposition of cruel or unusual punishments. The authors of that Amendment in the First Congress were men of the late eighteenth century, and they all knew that hanging was the normal form of execution in the old colonies and the new United States; if they had thought that hanging was a cruel or unusual form of execution, they would have said so.

Hanging is a clearly constitutional form of execution in the United States. If we are going to have executions, that is how they should be carried out, and they should be carried out in public. Quick, simple, and foolproof, and with the American people able to see just what is being done in their name.