Last week, Tennessee attempted to carry out the execution of Christa Pike, a convicted murderer who had spent three decades on death row. But the execution did not go as planned: After she was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital, Pike remained alive. She was then taken to hospital by ambulance.
This isn’t the first time an American execution hasn’t gone as planned. One reason is that the drugs needed for lethal injection have become increasingly difficult for US prison officials to obtain. Pharmaceutical companies don’t want their medicines used in executions — particularly manufacturers in Europe, where governments have opposed the death penalty for decades.
So, without access to regulated drugs, American prisons have had to improvise — sometimes with horrifying results.
The Global Story’s Tristan Redman speaks with investigative reporter Livvy Haydock about the consequences when the pharmaceutical supply chain refuses to feed the machinery of American executions.
Listen to Livvy’s podcast, Killing Death Row: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001rjdp
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00:00 Introduction
00:38 How a lethal injection is supposed to work
05:05 What went wrong in Christa Pike’s execution
07:16 Why America is struggling to get execution drugs
09:00 The drugs used in lethal injections
10:15 Why European drugmakers stopped supplying the US
12:38 America’s secret hunt for execution drugs
14:47 What happens when execution drugs expire
15:07 The London chemist supplying America
16:58 How the drug shortage can cause botched executions
17:30 Are lethal injections causing suffering?
19:05 Why the US can’t simply make its own execution drugs
21:21 Could prisons start making their own drugs?
21:46 Why Europe rejects the death penalty
22:32 Why Americans still support executions
23:17 When executions fail victims’ families
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