Eye-opening simulation shows exactly how lethal injection works inside the body
Warning: This article contains discussion of execution, which some readers may find distressing.
Hours after two doses of the lethal injection failed to execute Christa Pike, an eye-opening simulation reveals what actually happens when the cocktail of drugs enters the body.
The 50-year-old was set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in over 200 years until the lethal injections administered failed to kill her.
Pike has since been transferred to hospital, leading to questions about how exactly the injection works in the human body.
A simulation demonstrates how lethal injections works
Now, a simulation has given people an inside look into what the drug is made up of and what impact it has on the body that should have resulted in Pike’s death.
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Published to YouTube by Dr Wealz, the clip explains that one strapped to the chair, the first drug administered to the death row inmate is Pentobarbital, which is a ‘barbiturate sedative’.
The video continues: “As it enters the bloodstream, it acts on neurotransmitters in the brain slowing down communication between brain cells. This impairs the brain’s control over the respiratory and cardiovascular systems leading to a decrease in breathing and heart rate.”
This causes the inmate to fall unconscious before the second drug, Pancuronium Bromide, is used, which is a paralytic agent that ‘immediately starts to block SLE choline receptors at the neuromuscular junction preventing nerve impulses from reaching the muscles’.
The drug results in the chest becoming immobile, meaning the inmate can no longer draw breath before the final drug, potassium chloride, is administered. This runs through the bloodstream, ending in cardiac arrest.
Christa Pike’s lethal injection failed
However, despite this method being administered twice to Pike, it shockingly failed, with her attorneys having told the BBC that she is now in hospital ‘being provided life-saving measures’.
This comes after they explained: “Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring.”
Pike has been on death row for the last 30 years, after being famously convicted for the crime of murder involving 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Originally arrested in 1995, Pike and then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp lured Slemmer to the woods with the help of their friend, Shadolla Peterson.
It is said that the trio attempted to make peace with their 19-year-old Job Corps classmate, before Pike reportedly attacked Slemmer as the other two stayed lookout.
During the attack, Pike smashed Slemmer’s skull with a piece of asphalt and then kept a piece of bone as a keepsake.
Pike was sentenced to death at the age of 20 in 1996, making her was one of the youngest women to be sentenced to death in the USA since 1972’s Furman v. Georgia case.