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]

Exactly this. Pharmaceutical companies in the USA won’t supply these drugs to correctional facilities, and the UK and other European countries have an embargo on supply. The drugs used are often sourced via ‘compounding pharmacies’ which basically combine their own versions of the mass produced articles without the safety protocols, which are often unpredictable in strength and which have very short shelf lives. In addition medics won’t take part in these executions, so they are carried out by prison personnel.

There have been botched executions via this method in the past, but I think that given the above it was only a matter of time before something as truly horrific as this was going to happen. The attitude of the correctional authorities seems to be that these executions must take place at all costs and the fact that they are doing it with substandard drugs and untrained personnel, to the potential cost of the condemned prisoner, seems to be an irrelevance. Hopefully this case will shine a light on these practices so that they can no longer be ignored and lethal injection will be shelved, at least for the time being while the problems are properly addressed.

Because she didn’t die and they were at the limit of the protocols of administering the drugs repeatedly. Once it was clear they had failed they wouldn’t have had any choice about medical intervention. In a hospital setting the treatment choices would be controlled by the medics, not the prison authorities and it’s they who will be charged with the decision as to what happens next.

In one of the bbc articles it states that a 3rd of executions in the states go wrong.

A THIRD? Who are the psychopaths doing that for a job? That’s got to be purposeful.

Well she didn’t did she?

Ok thanks. Christa Pike herself requested the firing squad. Does anyone think that would’ve been worse for her? (That’s directed at everyone)

One would expect the State to behave better than a brain-damaged, mentally ill 18-year-old.

It would have better than this.

I believe she requested hanging as well. Firing squad and hanging were and are not options available to her, as they aren’t legally authorized method used in Tennessee. She could have chosen the electric chair.

It’s very interesting that in a bid to appear more civilised (having lethal injection as the preferred execution method) Tennessee have indeed made themselves look more barbaric than most of the people they have incarcerated.

Well obviously firing squad and hanging aren't reliable enough. Especially if it's a short drop hanging.

I read a Guardian article about the firing squads that was just as horrifying. Strong suspicions in recent cases of them deliberately missing the target ventricle in order to make the prisoner die more slowly and in more pain.

There is no humane way of carrying out the death penalty, it’s so, so wrong in every possible way.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/01/firing-squad-execution-idaho?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

There is also the fiction of a blank bullet so that cowards can pretend they didn't do it.

The only way that would work would be to get some of the less bright posters on this thread to pull the trigger (as they so clearly fantasise about). Anyone who has handled a firearm to any degree of skill would immediately know if they fired a blank.

That doesn't obviate death by firing squad. In a country as obsessed with guns as the US it's a mystery that it isn't compulsory.

(adding that the guillotine was meant to be humane and is certainly pretty effective. As long as you ensure it's well built and the blade slides freely).

I very much doubt any of the commenters on this thread or the wider internet would be so keen on the death penalty if they were the ones pulling the trigger. I imagine a few of them will claim they would be fine with it, but they'd find the reality of it very different from the fantasy they like to salivate over.

I wonder if I doubt it more than you ?

Yeahhh would you trust the US execution teams to carry out any method of execution efficiently?

I've read their track record in WW2 at Nuremberg.

It should chill the marrow that Britain slowly and incrementally - but very very very deliberately - honed judicial murder/killing* with zero fuss, fanfare or braggadocio (although very few countries can beat the US in a boast-off). And the end result is a method that can take as little as 8 seconds from the condemned cell opening, to the sudden end of that fatal final fall.

*delete as applicable

If you are going to have execution at all, I far far prefer Britain's approach to the US's.

Quiet. No fuss. And no payment if there is a reprieve. Although I think overnight expenses should be covered if the executioner had to travel before the reprieve was announced. (It was a spat over this that led Pierrepoint to hang up his noose).

Obviously someone happy to kill someone for money can't really be trusted to tell the truth. But whoever it was who helped Pierrepoint write his memoirs did a good job of encapsulating why the death penalty isn't about victims or justice. I commend it to the brighter here.

In this case we know she's guilty. So you may think she deserves the death penalty for what she did.

But imagine if she'd been fitted up and was innocent and she's just been through this?

There's no excuse for this sort of debacle. Whatever the offence was.

In this case we know she's guilty. So you may think she deserves the death penalty for what she did.

We knew Timothy Evans was guilty too. Or Andrew Malkinson. Because they were convicted.

If you support the death penalty, but refuse to admit that it will lead to some innocent people being executed, then you aren't that bright are you ?

I'm sure there's a humane way with perhaps dealer sourced drugs. For example a fatal overdose of fentanyl and midazolam. Off you go in a lovely daze. Anyone who has ever had sedation for endoscopy or colonoscopy will have had that combo (obviously in a non fatal dosage!).

Both drugs can be sourced, just look at all the addicts in America. So an overdose would probably work without the same botch up as with the probably out of date, or incorrect dosage of the drug used in Christa Pike's execution.

I'm not a medic and I am sure I will be told what is wrong with the above thesis. I suppose sourcing the drugs (illegally) is the bogey, and maybe the drugs I mentioned are never fatal. But.....

Well how come the cyanide suicide pills used by Goering and Himmler took seconds ?

I’m not sure. I know the firing squad is still an option in Utah and it’s carried out by several marksmen at a time - some of whom have blanks and some live bullets. I think this is potentially the safest and most humane option for both the condemned as it ensures a quick dispatch, and for those carrying out the execution it will never be known who fired the fatal shot.

I suspect the problem is that although there are calls for the death penalty there aren’t many who have the stomach to actually carry it out. Hence the problems with lethal injection - it’s an attempt to sanitise it as much as possible for those involved and in the rush for that it seems the rights of the condemned prisoner are the last concern.

I am completely opposed to the death penalty in all cases, but even more so in this one. It should be abolished and Christa Pike should never have had a death sentence in the first place considering her horrifically abusive childhood.

On the subject of 'humane' methods of execution, why don't they inject them with air? Doesn't that kill instantly?