Christa Pike: What Happened Inside the Execution Chamber

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1:00This is Hidden Tillers Live with Tony Brusky and Robin Drake. Let's continue on our conversation with another big thing that's happened this week. We're looking at an absolute failure of the justice system, and it played out in real time inside a Tennessee execution chamber. Surprise Wednesday night, the state attempted to execute Christa Pike, who brutally murdered 19 year old Colleen Selmer back in 1995, instead of delivering justice, the state bungled it horrifically. Pike was given too lethal injection. She survived both snoring. Witnesses reported she was breathing, complaining about the burning sensation in her arm. And yes, like I said, snoring before they finally gave up and called an ambulance. Governor Bill Lee has now halted all executions. We have to ask the hard questions here. How? How? How? Why? How and why does the state government with these resources fail this spectacularly?

2:03You had one job. Is this just gross bureaucratic incompetence or is there a quiet medical sabotage happening behind the scenes? I don't know the answer to this question. Joining us to discuss a retired FBI special agent, Jennifer Kaufendaffer, and retired FBI special agency for the counterintelligence behavioral analysis program, and masterclass instructor Robin Drake. The state government had years to prepare for this. Access to strict medical protocols, specialized staff. How does the ultimate punishment fail not once? Twice. While the inmate is literally snoring on the table, Jen, I know you got thoughts. I have thoughts here. So, and I'm going to put on my tactical medic hat. All right. These individuals who are administering this, and it's about a 7% or a 93% success rate

3:10in administering lethal injections, which in my opinion is pathetic. It should never be 93% that you're walking in there and you're like, man, I mean, that's close to 10% failure. They're going in there going, man, I wonder if this is going to work. Firing squads, by the way, are 100% success. That's what I was saying, yeah. Yeah. You can't miss. It's the way to go. It's why Utah changed. And our Idaho, excuse me, changed the firing squad. When you look at, just imagine your firing squad, you've got expert shooters. They're close range pretty much. I mean, for a rifle. And nobody knows who has the blank. So it's great for them because they don't know necessarily that they took the life. You fire a straightener there and it's done. It's done. You're not going to survive that. And here with this, this is the reason they do not use phlebotomists. They literally use staff.

4:13Now they brought in a doctor. I will tell you from working in the ambulance, working in the ER, all the classes I've taken, becoming a tactical medic. They don't know how to stick anyone. They never do it. Doctors don't do it. They oversee the overall health of the patient, what should happen, what shouldn't give them an IV. They're over here. Then you have the phlebotomists, the nurses, anesthesiologists that are really good at finding veins. For those of you in the audience that have ever given blood, you know when you go into the new one and they're screwing around with your vein. Now look, look, I don't know if you can see these. I've got veins, the size of frickin' large spaghetti noodles. They are huge poking out of my skin. I might be fed a chini there, I think. I'm telling you. Like I walk in and they're like.

5:14Seeing Rigatoni, Jen. I got Rigatoni's. I don't have angel hair. I'm getting it so... You're fast, Collier. These people have them pointing down below the skin. They can't find them. If you ever seen those people, I feel terrible. They're next to me, give them blood and they're like, oh, we've almost gone. Yeah. You know, screwing around. That's literally the situation I think you have here. Now, I have researched. I've tried to find. I can't find because I'm never going to find who actually was the executioner because that is hidden and you don't know. But I could tell you, generally, it is literally a staff person. Yes. Oversteep by doctor. So you literally have some moron. Sorry. Moron, when it comes to putting a needle into a vein that's drawn to find the vein. Yeah. So they're squeezing now this phenobarvatal.

6:17And God knows, I'm sure they just missed it and it's like, go and that's why she said, oh, my arm. It's because it's all like all over here in the arm. Now people are saying, oh, her vein collapsed and this, my belief is from experience because it's really hard when you learn this. You got to find the vein. It's hard. Why? I guess is the question. I mean, again, this is like kind of one of those 101 common sense. Okay, we're going to literally put somebody to death. We're very, very regulated on the chemicals and the solutions that we use to do this. But when it comes down to the actual execution, pardon the pun, of the play of okay, insert needle here, let's pick the least qualified person for that job. When I looked it up, it's because they don't, so the medical profession, they take the oath to do no harm.

7:18I hit the chronicle. Yeah. And so you're not getting nurses and doctors in there that are going to say kill someone. So they're actually trying to train up, you know, the wardens, you know, the people work inside the prison system to be able to do this and how often do they do this? And so. You put a job opportunity out there on one of the message boards. You're going to get a lot of people signing up for wanting to kill people. So let's do that thought experiment. It's a good one because I looked a lot into this because I haven't looked at this before. And so just play that one forward. You know, so in the Bureau and Jen knows too, one of the things when you're potentially open to confidential human source who's going to give you information or take actions on the behalf of the government, confidentiality and control of that information is really paramount because you don't want them giving out information or sensationalizing the things they do because it under writes the entire process. And same thing here, you can't put out an ad for someone to do this because they have to be vetted. They have to go through background checks and just like all the Bureau employees.

8:21And so they can only really trust a Bureau employee or someone who's taken a Hippocratic oath with with background and experience. So it's not as I wouldn't imagine. It's as easy as just saying, hey, I'm really good at finding veins. I'll do this for you. You know, I bet you get who would be a great candidate for this, a vet. Somebody who left and there in the world who hates people because they've seen the horrible shit that people do to pets and is more than happy. I think that's, I agree with that because that's the thing that really gets me on this one. I've never, I mean, we put a couple of animals down over the years. They use this, and typically they use exactly the same drug that they euthanize pets with. And it's, it's, it's, it's this cocktail. It's also getting, getting, is that, look at this too, getting a pharmaceutical company to actually give the drugs that they know are going to euthanize a human being. That's part of company policy sometimes, so they're not giving it. You know, so it's, it was a little more complicated because I, here's the argument that I first

9:21went into my AI and research. How come people can OD all the time and self eliminate like this apparently and we can't seemingly want to kill someone when we want to with drugs. It just blew my mind. We're not bright people. And it went through the entire litany of legally this and legally that and then these people aren't allowed to do this and I just like, you got to be kidding me. So it goes back to the same thing. I'm with Jen on this one. Why don't we just have a nice firing squad? So does she get like a free pass now? Is this like get out of jail for a while? No, look at that too. We were telling this coming. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was kind of hype, but you know, not real. But she's been a bench-lup for clemency though. There's, so I looked at that. So the, the government can still give clemency and so here's what the clemency on this case would be. It would be life behind bars, no parole. Sure. That's the best case scenario she could have. But I mean, I've read her final statements is like, I'm ready to go. You know, so what? The system, man.

10:22Meet, meet clevers, hundreds of wounds, a Pentagon, you know, carved in her when she was like, now this is a pretty good candidate for feed barbed-up. I mean, I said that. This is a solution. You ready for this solution? You hire a nurse to strictly set up a saline drip. Right? They put the little bag, they insert the, in the vein and you're just, it's a saline drip. Yep. Then, on the side of the, of the tubing, then you have your guard. All he has to do is literally, this is fail. This is dummy. We used to call it agent proof. This is agent proof. You hook it up. It's just a little screw here and you go like this. And then you go again. Or even retired versus, or you know, people that are served, or retired medics, I'm,

11:22I'm, I don't understand why they. It's so simple. It, and it, and I get that it's hard on some people that have, that don't have bulging veins or, or they had too much salted debut force or everything's not, or I mean, you can imagine, you know, the bad condition people are in, in, you know, on death row. So I can see how it's hard, but there are people really good at doing this that you should be able to figure this out, especially when you have entire, could you, it's, it's, it's, it was most horrendous comedy shows. It's like an SNL skit, isn't it? Because you heard the curtains going up. Oh, she still love it. We've heard it going down. We got to try again. Oh, curtain going up again. I mean, just, it was horrible. I mean, it was horrible. That was watching the live tweet. Like, Green Mile man. What's happening here? It's literally like the Green Mile. And then literally the family, the victim family. Right. It goes in, you know, travels. I know I think there was a go fund me for them or whatever. It doesn't matter. The horrific news. They've lost this child. This has been decades. They finally are going to have some closure.

12:24And then like you said, it seems like an SNL skit. And then the absolute oxymoron situation of trying to kill somebody and then rushing them to the hospital. I mean, it's, it's so weird. Yeah, that was the expression everybody had was like, why are she going to the hospital? Because you don't want to let them just sit there and flail away. I mean, why not a favorite shelter? If they probably wanted that. Yeah. And it's just like in their tissue and then, oh, yes. Awkwiyas, you know, what's. I mean, do I don't know the answer to this question. Is anybody know her current? Do we know her current medical status? Or have they not released that as of this? I'll double check it. I saw it this morning. Let me double check you guys keep talking. Like still alive. I know that. But, but I mean, I have no idea what would this cause like, you know, permanent brain damage now. Is she vegetable life after this? Or is she like, you know, up and having a pop tart in the morning? So I saw she was alive.

13:26She's still in the hospital. I haven't even seen any feedback about whether she's regained consciousness. Yeah. I don't think if they didn't get it in a vein, but maybe they got some in the vein. I think it's literally being absorbed. Yeah. In the skin. And body. And well, inside the body. Robin, what'd you find? Um, it's kind of, she's alive in critical condition at Vanderbilt University, hospital Nashville, and that's the latest hazardous morning. So she's in critical condition. Yeah. That, that it literally would be all over your body. It almost seems more cruel and weird now to be like, well, she's kind of in a somewhat catatonic state. Let's try again. Like, I don't want her to be free. She's a monster, but you know, at the same point, it's like, what the hell are we doing? If we can't do this with the needles, okay, well, you know, we had other methods that used to work pretty well.

14:27Maybe we should go back to that if this, if we can't quite hack this one. Um, it's, yeah, and this, the thing is it's becoming common. That's the scary thing. Your thoughts in the comment section on substack in YouTube as we continue to break down all of these cases here on the program. Want more on this case and others? Then press subscribe now and don't miss a moment of true crime coverage from Tony Briewski and the Hidden Killers podcast. Normally in these ads, you expect somebody to ask you to buy something, but this is something different. I'm Julian Barnes and I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I'm a national security reporter and that means I'm reporting on military operations. These are fast paced, quickly moving situations. What exactly is happening on the ground is often shredded in mystery, but we turn to trusted sources, satellite imagery and expertise built up over years in order to fair it out the

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