Missouri uses same drug for lethal injection as Tennessee

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A Tennessee death row inmate is in the hospital and on a ventilator after an attempt to execute her failed, per national reports.

On Wednesday, Christa Pike received lethal injection drugs twice and survived.

Tennessee and Missouri use the same drug for the lethal injection, pentobarbital. Missouri's Department of Corrections told ABC 17 News that Missouri's protocol for lethal injection is administering 5 grams of pentobarbital.

The last execution in Missouri by lethal injection was Lance Shockley, a man convicted of killing a Missouri State Highway Patrol Sergeant in 2006. Shockley was executed on Oct. 14, 2025

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Missouri has had 102 executions since 1976.

Heidi Moore, executive director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the death penalty isn't needed to keep Missourians safe.

"We don't need the death penalty to ensure that victims get justice because we have 23 states. Without it, victims are getting justice. We have people getting life without parole for murder first, and then victims are still getting justice. That person is locked away forever, and they will die IN the Missouri Department of Corrections," Moore said.

Jeff Stack, coordinator of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation, said that Missouri should get rid of the death penalty altogether.

"No, we should do away with the whole process. We should end the employment of death to try to make something right," Stack said. "Lethal injection. Somehow this is a gentler way to kill people while you're still talking about killing human beings. So it's intolerable. It's still murder by yet another name."

There are currently eight Missourians in Missouri Department of Corrections facilities on death row, but no executions are scheduled at this time. The most-recent person to receive a death sentence was Kenneth Simpson, who was found guilty in June of killing Hermann Police Sgt. Mason Griffith in 2023.