Just before my visit last week, the botched execution of Christa Pike was already an international news story. Nashville’s Centre of Correction executing a woman prisoner in 2026 was indeed something that demanded attention. This judicial killing attempt articulates the harsh conservatism that defines Nashville. On the surface a care-free, hedonistic city, a mecca for country music yet underneath a much more complex and nuanced place.
Where it comes from.
The family names of the city founders puts Nashville’s origins in the 1780s, to Presbyterian Ulster-Scots. This hardy group came out of Scotland as settlers of the Ulster Plantation of the 17th Century only to find that within a few generations their dreams were dashed by Penal Law restrictions and a restive indigenous population, forcing them to emigrate to the American colonies and seek there a society where; they, their faith, values, beliefs and ideas could thrive. They traded with the local Indians but fought them in bloody battles to keep a foothold at Fort Nashborough and they prevailed keeping on top of that restive indigenous population.
The Nashville settlement ( the English “borough” was replaced by the French “ville” after the 1776 Revolution) founded by; Robertsons, Donaldsons, Fultons, Crockett and many more surnames prominent at home, and still dominant in the city today. From these God fearing, hard working origins we get the values, beliefs and industry that created the Bible Belt. Charlie Crockett is a rising country music star who we saw at the Grand Old Opry. He said he was related to Davy Crockett whose family, legend says, came from Donemana, Co Tyrone.
Nashville is in the Deep South. In the 1960s segregation thrived here and Nashville was the centre of protests for equality. Segregation existed long after the American Civil War; a spill over from a thriving African slave economy with Nashville at its centre on the banks of the Cumberland river navigable from the Ohio river a tributary of the Mississippi. Buying and selling was core of their success.
The history plaques around the city today identify the places where change happened. This was reluctant change not the enlightened change the plaques suggest. The slave markets were reluctantly closed down in the 1870s. In the 1960s Black people were reluctantly allowed to sit at diners in local restaurant and to study at local schools. The illegal speakeasies of the 1930s were reluctantly legalised only because they blossomed into thriving and lucrative businesses still attracting one hundred people a day to relocate to Nashville and follow their dreams. We all know the names of those who succeeded such is the reach of country music. We know little of the ninety-nine percent who didn’t. And this makes Nashville what it is.
Big E Tours
We met one of the 99% for a city tour in his 1972 Ford pick-up truck. We heard the engine long before we saw the pick-up. This open-topped vehicles was attractively ramshackle as if it had just come of a ranch chancing rouge steers. It was dusty, dirty and perfect. Big E emerged to welcome us. He was a very tall man with a very deep voice, wearing cowboy boots, jeans, checked-shirt and Stetson. He had a bushy moustache and a handshake that crushed. We were seated on a constructed platform around the back rim of the truck without any seatbelts. It was showy and exciting.
In showing us Nashville, Big E was showing us his Nashville and himself. He was 40 years old when he came to the city in 1998 to become a country music star. That goal had so far eluded him but he had adapted with his dream intact. He worked security on Broadway for years and met so many stars. With few exceptions they are great people. John Prine was his hero and he met him once telling John what a great influence he was. Prine, Big E told us, was what he wanted to be.
Big E had written many great songs. These he felt would eventually be discovered like the time Patsy Cline’s husband was drinking at Robert’s Honky-Tonk and heard a young Willie Nelson sing “Crazy”. Nelson was taken home where Patsy was awakened to listen to Wille’s song and the next day she recorded the song. The myth is solid, the myth is unflappable, this is Nashville. Leaving Big E, we were told to chase our dreams and that he was going to be part of the Nashville story. I sincerely hope he is but he’s 68 and, well, I’m too cynical.
Assisted Death
I followed the tragic and botched execution of Christa Pike in the Tennessean newspaper during our stay. Much of the details remain confidential. What is clear is that drug companies refuse to supply licenced drugs for the purpose of execution and healthcare professionals refuse to take part. For these reasons it was likely to be a failure and it was.
Pentobarbital causes death in high dose and is the drug used for judicial killings. As of 2021, the sodium salt of pentobarbital is considered the “drug of choice” for animal euthanasia.
It is part of the protocol for physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands. In this case it is used orally as syrup along with alcohol and an antiemetic to stop vomiting. This is also the protocol in the US states where euthanasia is legal. In Switzerland sodium pentobarbital is administered IV; sleep induced within 30 seconds and the heart stops within 3 minutes. Oral administration is also used. A Swiss pharmacist reported in 2022 that the dose for assisted suicide had been raised because with lower doses death was preceded by a coma of up to 10 hours in some cases.
At this time, euthanasia remains illegal in Nashville and across the state of Tennessee. Despite ongoing debates and discussions on assisted dying, the state continues to uphold laws that prohibit euthanasia in all forms. This is probably fine as its impossible to get pentobarbital in this town.
Execution
Pentobarbital has been a substitute for sodium thiopental when that drug became unavailable in the US. In 2011 the U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental, on moral grounds, stopped production, and importation, again on moral grounds, proved impossible. Pentobarbital was used in a U.S. execution for the first time in December 2010 in a three-drug protocol; including pancuronium bromide as a muscle relaxant and potassium chloride to stop the heart. In March 2011 pentobarbital was used for the first time as the sole drug. Since then several states as well as the Federal government have used pentobarbital for lethal injections; some use three-drug protocols and others use pentobarbital alone depending on availability. The problem with pentobarbital as a single drug is that the lungs fill with fluid and prisoners literally drown. Lawyers are likely to complain that this is cruel.
Compounding Pharmacies in the US are allowed to manufacture medicines where there is an identified national shortage. As no proper manufacturer will supply for executions this constitutes a national shortage. Compounding pharmacies are now providing the drugs, unlicenced, for executions. Pentobarbital from a compounding pharmacy was first used in an execution in 2013 in Texas. The drug used in the attempted execution of Christa Pike appears to have been made by a compounding pharmacy in Texas.
There will be questions as to the quality of the pentobarbital injection solution used but there is also a question about the setting of the IV line. In a recent execution in Tennessee the prison employee who put in the IV line had not done so for 13 years and had only done it once before. The reports that have come out of Christa Pike’s execution attempt suggest that the line was not set intravenously but into the muscle. That would certainly explain the slower, less lethal effect of the injection.
It was stopped when she failed to die, she regained consciousness days after and has made a good recovery. There is a halt on all executions in Nashville and across Tennessee until 2027 at least but they are reluctant to consider making state execution illegal. There again is that reluctance to change old ways.
Other ways to die
On the day we left Nashville, a man armed with a gun and a knife was shot dead by a security officer at a Federal courthouse behind our hotel on Church Street. We were briefly caught up in the commotion. Police believe he tried to fire his gun at the entrance checkpoint, but it did not discharge. The security officer was suspicious of the man as “he parked his vehicle awkwardly outside the court house”. The 42-year-old, Jack Henson II, was from North Carolina. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire said the officer was a member of court security working with the U.S. Marshals Service. Cousin Robert seems to have forgotten how to spells his name?
Safe as houses.
Ironically, Nashville was one of the safest cities I have ever visited. It is clean and tidy and very exciting. In the Honky-tonks where much alcohol is consumed, I did not see any brawls or any bad behaviour. Staff in hotels, restaurants and bars were always very helpful, polite and courteous. All seem to have moved to Nashville from other places and they love it such as our host at the restaurant on out first evening. She was from Castlederg, Co Tyrone and had been in the city for 20 years and she plans to stay.
I am not a country music fan. I am, you might say, too cynical. I shun the mawkish sentimentality of the country song. It is one of the masks we use to hide our hypocrisies which might be why it is so successful and why its so Nashville. Nashville, in spite of all, I will be back.
I am a pharmacist in Belfast.
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