Two Lethal Injections Failed. Christa Pike Is in Critical Condition

Christa Pike survived two lethal injections and is in critical condition, the BBC reports, after an execution that failed. Her lawyers said the failure “goes far beyond any one person” — a claim that locates the problem in the process around the execution rather than in a single pair of hands. That framing is the lawyers' argument, not an established finding, but it is the more interesting question: in a procedure built to be irreversible, a botched attempt forces attention onto who, or what, is actually responsible.