Overview
- A Reuters/Ipsos national poll released Oct. 20 found about one-third of adults support trying a second execution after a failed attempt while 39% prefer allowing life imprisonment and 26% were unsure.
- Tennessee must decide whether to reschedule Christa Pike’s execution after she survived two doses of pentobarbital on Sept. 30, was hospitalized with severe arm injuries, and later returned to custody after regaining consciousness.
- The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed at least one state to set a second execution date after a botched attempt, but courts continue to face Eighth Amendment and procedural challenges that could bar repeat tries.
- States retaining the death penalty are struggling to obtain lethal-injection drugs and are weighing alternatives such as firing squads or nitrogen hypoxia, which raises fresh legal and operational questions for corrections officials.
- The controversy has political and administrative fallout: Tennessee’s corrections commissioner announced plans to step down and a proposal to livestream the planned Dec. 3 firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan was canceled by the president while the execution remains scheduled.