Christa Pike’sfailed executionin September has raised fresh questions about Tennessee’s lethal injection execution protocol, which is in its fourth iteration in the past two decades.<\/p>\n
Pike’swasthe secondbotched execution by Tennessee this year. She had been sentenced to death for her role in the 1995 torture and murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer.<\/p>\n
CBS News reviewed the state’s lethal injection protocols going back to 2007 and found that over the years the protocols grew increasingly vague.<\/p>\n
Kit Thomas, the deputy chief of the capital habeas unit at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Nashville and a critic of the state’s current protocols, told CBS News that the protocol has been reduced “both in length and in details.” Thomas said she is most familiar with the protocols since 2018.<\/p>\n
Prior to 2025, the Tennessee lethal injection protocols were laid out in detail over 100 pages and included extensive protocols about the various execution teams, their roles and responsibilities, the drugs used, established practices around IV lines and administering the lethal drugs.<\/p>\n
But in the most recent version, released to the public early last year, there were only 44 pages to guide members of the execution team through the process.<\/p>\n
Thomas believes that the state’s move to a shorter protocol has shielded officials from accountability if something went awry.<\/p>\n
“When there are fewer rules, there are just fewer ways for you to be penalized,” she told CBS News.<\/p>\n
Some of the most significant changes made were to the protocols governing the intravenous team, including how that team should place catheters and what to do if they faced difficulties administering the drugs. Thomas said those steps are some of the most consequential to carrying out a lethal injection.<\/p>\n
The so-called IV team’s primary role, according to past protocols, was establishing “properly functioning IV lines for administration of the lethal injection chemicals.” Protocols also detailed the team’s duties, and specified how to ensure the IV equipment was in working order and that IV lines were flowing properly.<\/p>\n
In the 2025 protocol, only one line is given to describe the primary role of the IV team, saying “the IV Team is responsible for establishing properly functioning IV lines for administration of the LIC [lethal injection chemicals].”<\/p>\n
Source: CBS News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christa Pike’sfailed executionin September has raised fresh questions about Tennessee’s lethal injection execution protocol, which is in its fourth iteration in the past two decades. Pike’swasthe secondbotched execution by Tennessee this year. She had been sentenced to death for her role in the 1995 torture and murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer. CBS News […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/god-bless-usa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}