On September 30^th, 2026, they gave Christa Gail Pike, age 50, a lovely red jumpsuit and prison-issued white slippers, then led her from her state-paid security accommodations to a room where they strapped her down to what was supposedly the last examination table she would ever use.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, or in Hemet, CA, Pike is the first woman in Tennessee to be executed in over 200 years. Also, in Tennessee,   they changed the way they do their chemical executions from a mixture of 3 chemicals down to one: Pentobarbital. They administered this powerful barbiturate in two separate doses.

The reason there were two different doses is that Ms. Pike was still alive after the first shot. Hence, the second shot. Let me repeat that for those of you who read kind of slow: Pike was still alive after the 2^nd shot! According to various reports by the mainstream media, instead of becoming, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, “Room Temperature” (Death, for those who won’t get the reference), she was sleeping on the table and snoring loudly.

Depending on who you believe in the mainstream media outfits, the execution squad had used up to 7 different needles to start an IV  in this process. Evidently, they couldn’t find a good vein to stick a needle into. And supposedly, drugs did not enter her bloodstream, but were entering the muscles in  her arm, which  Pike then claimed: “It burns”

No, Crista, that wasn’t the drugs; that was the beginning of your journey into  Hell.

According to Tennessee prison officials, it took an hour for them to go through  7 different needles, after which they called off the execution and then, get this… had this murdering piece of filth taken, by ambulance, to a hospital where reports of medical treatment were given to her and now she is walking around talking to people, and has since been returned to prison.

Now, I have a few problems with the list of events above. 

For starters: Pike was convicted for the gruesome torture and murder of Colleen  Slemmer in 1995. Pike was  18 years old at the time. For the past  32  years, this murderer was sitting at the expense of the hardworking, tax-paying public of  Tennessee,  on Death Row.

32 years in the Tennessee court system to appeal what 12 good and just people (poetic wording for  The Jury)  saw as a heinous crime deserving of death. Why did it take so long?

So, for giggles, I looked up which states had the shortest appeal times for death-row inmates: Virginia used to have the shortest, at 295 days from the death sentence to the ruling by its court of last resort. Unfortunately, Virginia abolished the death penalty in its state in 2021. But now our new leader is the state of Georgia, coming in at 297 days from the notice of appeal to the final state high court decision. 

If Texas had their way, once Crista had been found guilty and one appeal done, usually in about 2 hours after the original verdict, they’d take her out back, shoot her, then go out for Mexican food.

Yet Tennessee took 32 years…and they aren’t finished yet! (I will just leave that there for you to think on)

Next, it took them an hour to go through this executional debacle. As I previously mentioned, they couldn’t find a “Proper Vein” in her arms to inject her with the Pentobarbital because supposedly her veins kept collapsing or she had “small veins” or something else. Now, I’m not a doctor, but I do have internet access and a wee bit of common sense. Because the way I’m thinking is this: If the veins you are trying to use on Pike are too small to be of use, then why not go to a larger vein?

And believe it or not, we only need to look to our favorite creature of the night, Dracula, for the answer.

See, when Dracula was looking for a bite to eat, he would head out, find some unsuspecting victim, and bite in a place where he could get the most blood as quickly as possible: Translation: he went for the jugular vein in the neck. This makes sense. Because one: He had long, sharp, pointed fangs to get through the muscles of the neck, and two: He could drink out the most blood in the quickest fashion because it was a larger vein.

There are 4 veins in the neck: Internal Jugular, External Jugular, Anterior Jugular, and Vertebral Vein. The last two, Anterior & Vertebral, would be useless to Ol’ Drac. Still, the Internal and External Jugulars would be perfect not only for his, but for the executioner’s purposes.

• Internal Jugular Vein: The largest neck vein. It runs deep beneath the major neck muscles on both sides of the windpipe, carrying blood away from your brain, face, and head toward the heart.
• External Jugular Vein: A more superficial vein located closer to the skin and outside the main neck muscles. It drains blood from the outer head and scalp into the subclavian vein.

So someone please tell me why neither one of these medical/educational “geniuses” would be smart enough to do a neck shot instead of it going to the arms and taking its sweet time?

The answer(s), my friend, come down to anatomical, medical, and ethical constraints and are as follows:

The first reason is, and I’m not kidding here: “High Risk of Catastrophic Medical Error.” The neck houses the jugular veins and carotid arteries, which lie deep beneath the skin (I already said that earlier, but some people are just slow) and are very close together. Injections into the neck present several immediate dangers: Accidental Artery Puncture: Accidentally injecting into an artery rather than a vein blocks blood flow to the brain, causing immediate, excruciating pain, arterial spasms, and violent physical trauma. (This reminds me of what Pike’s murder victim went through) Oh, the person being executed could also experience an Air Embolism or Stroke (someone please let me know when I’m supposed to start giving a crap here).

The Second is Lack of Qualified Medical Personnel: This one I can understand is because doctors and nurses took an oath to protect Life, not to take it (Are you abortion professionals, paying attention here?), thus creating a conflict with their personal beliefs and professional ethics. I get that. (Thank you, YouTube and Fox)

The next two reasons I can’t believe they are using:

The third is: “Cruel and Unusual” Legal Challenges. I think this has the A.C.L.U. written all over it. Or, to put it in the words of ABC News and Headlines: “Lethal injection protocols are designed to mimic a peaceful clinical procedure. Stabbing an inmate in the neck with a large-bore needle in front of witnesses or media observers constitutes a highly disturbing visual and severe physical trauma. Using a neck insertion site almost always triggers legal challenges under the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.”

Somebody, please tell that to Christa Pike’s murder victim, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a Job Corps student killed by Pike, in Knoxville, Tennessee, on January 12th, 1995. Oh wait! You can’t, because Colleen Slemmer was killed with a box cutter and a piece of asphalt, with a piece of Slemmer’s skull taken by Pike as a souvenir.

And finally…

“Alternative Sites are Prioritized”: According to NPR, “When an inmate’s arm veins are unusable, protocols generally instruct teams to look for other peripheral backups first, such as the hands, legs, or feet. If a deeper central line is absolutely authorized by state protocol as a last resort, executioners typically look to the groin (femoral vein) or under the collarbone, rather than the neck, because those areas provide a more stable surface to tape down and secure the running lines.”

Now we hear Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada is resigning this month following the botched execution. A new guy, Ed Stanton, a former U.S. Attorney, will lead an independent review of the execution chamber breakdown. This was the 2nd botched execution attempt in Tennessee under Strada, with the last one happening in May 2026. (Thank you, YouTube and WTOC).

You know what it means, don’t you?

That Pike and the rest of the murders on Tennessee’s Death row just got an extension on their “Date with Death”. Because the state government has to approve the appointment, which will go through some kind of committee, Stanton will have to be brought up to speed on what is going on and how the procedure works. Then there will be another “Independent Review” of the execution chamber breakdown (Thanks go to The Guardian Newspaper for that one.)

Oh, and lest we forget, there will be other court dates set on behalf of Pike to get her sentence commuted from Death to Life Without the Possibility of Parole. One would think that after 32 years, and counting, of Pike being on Death Row, isn’t she already getting Life Without the Possibility of Parole?

Or, to put it more bluntly, we are talking years from now before Pike has a new date with the needle.

Is that fair? Is that justice? Is THIS really the way our justice system was designed to work?

To those of us who pay the bills for the care, feeding, and even the attorney fees for monsters like this: I would wholeheartedly say No!

I’d ask victims like Colleen Slemmer what they would say on the subject, but as we all know, the dead are unable to speak for themselves.

Maybe it’s time we spoke for them. I now return you to your regular scheduled lives… already in progress.