Christa Pike -where does she stand legally?

[mids2019]

Just this really. Christ a is obviously being giving life saving treatment at hospital but where does she now stand legally. I suppose she probably has irreversible brain damage so will this not allow a second execution to take place? Is this a cruel and unusual punishment?

[Note from MNHQ - edited your title, OP]

Unless this "doctor" is doing so deliberately, of course. It could possibly be the case. You never know.

in 1994 80% in US supported the death penalty, now it is 52%

Is that a recent figure. It’s interesting because in the MAGA era I wouldn’t have expected it to have dropped as much. I’m aware less than half of America support MAGA.

@Grumblegrumblegrumble it is actually last year to be exact

From Gemini:
By Political Party
Party affiliation shows a wide divide:

Republicans: ~81%–82% in favor

Independents: ~47% in favor

Democrats: ~32% in favor

Overall is as per @HoraceCope said, 54%

Thank you. This is very promising and I was about to say that seems like a very quick change but in my mind 1996 is about 10 years ago! Even in 30 years that seems like a massive change.

I still can’t get my head round the whole thing.

The most used method of executing someone in the States is lethal injection yet a) medical professionals are not allowed to participate, and b) pharmaceutical companies won’t supply the proper drugs for it. And yet they go on, cobbling together badly trained prison staff to administer shonky drugs and making a hash of it. It’s unbelievable - third world stuff.

Does killing people reduce the number of people being killed? Or increase the number?

I am so sorry @Frequency.
I would probably feel as you do.

What’s beyond shocking is that while she did that terrible thing as an unhinged kid after abuse, etc, they are sober, ‘sane’ government officials carrying out cold-blooded planned murder, which is another kind of chilling.

To have tried to kill her twice, then to save her only to kill her again, does seem cruel beyond words.

Sorry but did her victim have this kind of mercy? I feel sorry for her victim’s mother. I don’t believe in the death penalty in general but why are they keeping her alive now.

The death penalty has no place in a civilised society. Although the way the US seems to be going that term seems to be less evident.

And let’s be honest here, this isn’t a case of execution being a punishment. The state isn’t saving money by executing its citizens, they keep them on death row for 30 plus years, so they already serve a life sentence, and then they’re executed, or in this case permanently disabled.

I believe if she loses capacity now because of this an execution would not be allowed to take place, but we have to question the kind of society which attempts to kill someone, ballses it up, treats them back to health and then kills them again.

In this context it doesn’t matter what she did 30 years ago. We’re talking about the here and now, and this is barbaric.

She hit a young girl with a rock after torturing her after luring her to her death making her think she was making friends. She carried around a piece of her skull. I don’t like the death penalty but omg she did a terrible thing to another human being.

Sorry but did her victim have this kind of mercy?

If you want to go to an eye for an eye kind of justice system then you crack on, but do it away from me. Have you not looked around the world and seen where that leads?

Nobody is denying that. At all. The fact that she did a terrible thing to another human being doesn’t justify or excuse the state from its obligation to provide a method of execution which involves the minimum amount of suffering to get the job done. You say you don’t like the death penalty but at the same time you seem to be saying it’s fine for her to suffer unnecessarily because of what she did. How do you reconcile those two things ?

It might help many posters here to remember that nowadays Pike would have been spared the death penalty because her whole life was one of abuse, cruelty and neglect, which contributed significantly to turning her into the sociopath she undoubtedly was.

This case is just horrendous on many levels. She was clearly let down as a child with the level of abuse she experienced and was a fucked up kid who committed a terrible crime. I think her abuse explains but doesn’t excuse what she did. I don’t think she should have ever been given the death penalty and I’m sure if she was sentenced today wouldn’t.

There should have been no circumstances where this was botched. They are now in such a messy area re ethics about what happens next. I imagine she’s in a pretty terrible way.

Exactly this. We moved away from deliberately cruel and torturous methods of execution a long time ago. The state’s job isn’t to exact retribution, it’s to dispense justice, and where execution is involved to dispatch the condemned in the quickest and most humane way possible.

Double standards when regimes in the Middle East that execute in public, and women for adultery and the like are castigated by America. Yet they do the same in semi public (observers) to their own.

And Tennessee is in that Bible Belt of devout Christian evangelists. The irony.

I wonder how many of the supposedly rabid enthusiasts for state killing here would also froth when decrying sharia law ?

Christa Pike had, by any measure, a horrific childhood. I do wonder whether her mother wanted her at all and what might have happened if she had been able to access free, safe reproductive care in her state. It sounds to me like Pike suffered horribly and she spread suffering around her, I don’t know how I’d argue it with a pro life person but maybe never being born is a better option.

Agree. I think you also have to question a society which attempts to kill someone, ballses it up and then declares that because they are now mentally incapacitated as a result, they cannot face the death penalty. So they are left to live their life with profound disability. Which is quite likely to be the outcome here. If she survives.

It would seem that the state in which Pike was condemned, pro lifers are mostly pro death penalty too, so it would be an interesting argument !!

Agree with all this. ⬆️

I did not realise this about the drugs. Omg.
Didn’t think some of the companies would have that much ethical thinking, given some of the other shit they have done - asbestos in talc, petrochemical shit in everything. And so on.

This was my view too.

You wonder how her mother could allow her daughter to be raped and abused like she was. According to the Guardian article someone posted upthread her mother didn't believe her when she said she was raped at 11. But Christa cried for her in the video where she was sentenced.