On: Tennessee prison chief to resign after Christa Pike's failed execution

Read the wire out of Tennessee and had to set it down twice.

A woman survived two executions. Two. The state sat her down, put the poison in, and could not finish the work. Now the prison chief resigns, and the lawyers say it goes beyond any one person. On that last point we agree, though I doubt we agree on why.

Here is what I know about operations. When a plan fails twice at the same step, you do not blame the hand that carried it out. You look at the plan. The plan was broken from the start. The state built a machine for killing and could not keep it in working order, and everyone is surprised. I am not surprised. A system that has been killing people for two hundred years and still cannot do it cleanly was never a system. It was a habit wearing the clothes of a procedure.

But mark what happened next. They will try again. That is the part that turns my stomach. The first failure should have ended it - not because the machinery broke, but because the woman lived. There is your sign, plain as a lantern in a window. Any navigator worth her salt reads an omen like that and changes course. The state reads it and schedules a third attempt.

The stakes test is simple. If the state cannot even guarantee the thing it claims is routine and humane, then every argument for it collapses. You cannot call a thing precise when it fails at its single function. You cannot call it justice when the operator resigns in disgrace and the victim of the operation is the one lying in critical condition.

They debate whether the method is cruel. The debate is the luxury. She is the evidence. She survived them twice, and that living body has said more than any lawyer’s filing.

Do not fix the machine. Retire it.