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]

Good question, and using that as a method would be instant. Maybe it's not available or something either legitimately or not. Although I just googled a question and it's used apparently in the mining industry and is a (non toxic obv.)component in some medicines.

Just to reiterate, I am not in favour of the DP at all. Just joining in the discussion about humane methods if it is to happen in certain States in the U.S.

No, it doesn’t. An air embolism can be incredibly painful, last for several minutes and isn’t always fatal. Air injected into a major vein strains the heart and lungs and even when a fatal volume of air enters the vascular system, death is not instantaneous - it can take up to fifteen minutes of painful and distressing progressive cardiovascular or respiratory collapse before death. Even injecting air into an artery rather than a vein causes progressive tissue damage and pain, not instant death.

Obviously someone happy to kill someone for money can't really be trusted to tell the truth.

I'm not sure that is true at all. There are mercenaries who are ex-army and who are damn careful which company they work for, apparently, and what jobs they take. Not every outfit is like Wagner.

There can be different moral codes and an executioner has a clearly defined role within a structured society. I could easily see that some people would find this is a roll they somehow fall into, but take it seriously to do it to the best of their ability and don't necessarily feel ashamed of it, and wouldn't lie.

Others wouldn't feel that way, ofc.

It's merely a question of language, not philosophy.

Unless I have made a mistake and the people carrying out the execution are doing it for free ? I mean we can tell from this thread alone there are a lot of posters who would not only queue up to do it for free, but pay to get to the head of that queue.

Not sure what this tells us about them. But I am sure they are able to speak for themselves.

State revenge murder
Aye like that is really working
With an average of 44,000 gun deaths annually .
Not including all the other ways to meet a sticky end at the hands of a nutter

That they’re prepared to lawfully kill? I dare say some probably would do it, if given the opportunity. It probably wouldn’t be a role best suited to someone too governed by emotion though. That can make for a sloppy executioner.

“There can be different moral codes and an executioner has a clearly defined role within a structured society”

This.

As an aside, cyanide pills aren’t used because it is a particularly unpleasant death. It can be quite a prolonged and painful way to tap out of life.

I think the blanks thing is a myth. The article I linked to above had three marksmen and three bullets in the prisoner, just not three in the right place

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. TBH I don’t agree that anyone’s childhood should have a bearing, unless the crimes they’ve committed are against the perpitrators of the wrongs committed against them.

So e.g. if an adult murdered their parent who had abused them throughout their childhood or when a woman kills her husband who has been physically abusive.

It’s a fact that most criminals who commit horrendous crimes have had difficult and often complex and abusive childhoods. We don’t believe they should serve lesser sentences because of it, perhaps with the exception of children who commit crimes.

But what it comes down to is the fact that murder is wrong. Full stop.

So if it’s wrong to kill someone because you thought she was stealing your boyfriend, then it’s wrong to kill someone because they committed the wrong of killing someone.

There aren’t degrees of murder in that sense. And execution is first degree murder. It’s planned, calculated, the date is set, the scene is set. It’s no different to planning to kill someone you don’t like apart from that it’s legal.

I don't think childhood abuse in and of itself should matter, but the physical and mental effects of that abuse should.

In Christa's case, she had damage to her frontal lobe from FAS, PTSD from the trauma of her childhood and sexual abuse, and BPD. That should have been taken into account when determining the level of accountability she should have for her actions, and most importantly, whether or not she could have been rehabilitated.

The idea of sentencing an 18-year-old to life with no possibility of parole leaves me deeply uncomfortable, regardless of the crime. A long, long sentence was deserved, but are we really saying there was no chance, with the right support, she could have been helped?

Imo, rehabilitation brings more justice than death. The death penalty is abhorrent, and the way the US chooses to carry it out is particularly cruel, but it is also an end. That's not justice; that is vengeance. Rehabilitating someone to the point where they can truly understand the gravity of their crime and have to live with genuine remorse is a far greater punishment than death.

This is just horrible all round. I would imagine she would be nursed back to health, just to face execution again. Although, she is probably brain damaged and will never come back from this anyway.

I also don't get why some posters are saying she killed a young girl. Her victim was 19. Pike was 18 at the time. Using language like that is just unnecessarily inflammatory.

Air embolisms are very dangerous/fatal but they don't kill you instantly. They can cause strokes, cardiac arrest etc that lead to death but it's not guaranteed what will happen and it can take anything from 2 minutes to several hours.

The British method of hanging was probably one of the more instantaneous but then the prisoner knows they will be hanged and has to go through the process of being weighed etc which is psychologically torturous. Alternatively the soviet method of not telling prisoners they were going to be executed, then suddenly having them startled with a bright light followed by a very precise point blank shot is "kinder" in that it's instantaneous and you don't know what's happening till it's over. But they did it to a LOT of people. Plus, then everyone has the psychological torture of knowing they could be killed at any time.

I'm with you I don't think there is a humane way to kill someone. I think the idea there might be is part of the fiction that allows it.to continue in places like America.

No, I don't think that people were doing it for free but I also don't think that every executioner was ashamed of his job or felt the need to lie about it. It was a dying trade and not a highly esteemed one, but not one that was repulsive to many. It was an era where people lived a great deal closer to death than they do now - a great deal closer.

In that day and age there was a very different and far more pragmatic mindset in some aspects, and most of all different people think differently.

The people who are vengeful and relishing the idea of killing someone on this thread seem distinctly unprofessional and while I havent read the book I've not heard that Albert Pierrepoint was unprofessional. He seems to have approached it with gravity and taken pride in doing his job as well as he can.

News reporting now she’s unconscious and on a ventilator

let's hope she simply dies anyway at this point.

So what happens if she doesn’t die, but is being kept artificially alive? How long does that go on for, bearing in mind that it’s not a legal execution method to switch off someone’s ventilator…? I don’t know if she has any family - I think parents are both dead but don’t know about siblings. Who on earth would decide that?

If they "switch her off", then surely that would be to do with her prognosis, and have nothing to do with the fact she was meant to be executed.

She has a sister, apparently. It doesn’t appear that they have any relationship.

I don’t know if she has a medical POA, but if she did they would be able to make the decision. If there is no POA or next of kin I think it would be the decision of the hospital’s medical ethics committee, with the approval of the state.

Karma's a bitch.

And thankfully Karma has no place in the observation of the law. The state is dispensing justice, not retribution.

Go and ask a practising Buddhist whether karma is botched executions.

Jesus wept.

I've just read a fair bit of the report on Christa Pike.

What she did was appalling but it was absolutely not in any way a surprise given her childhood. The almost unrelenting horror of it, the profound lack of any but fleeting safety, and the way she was used and abused is just shocking.

So was her crime, but this human being was taught from the beginning that violence is the everyday way to live No stability, only faint shreds of love from one grandmother for a short time, no moral guidance, appalling examples around her and this unrelenting violence. No wonder she became violent in turn.

I mean as a very small child she was taken to the slaughter house when her grandfather was babysitting her. She put flowers on the animals she took to and petted them, and then saw men brutally killing and disembowelling them in front of her regularly!

And for the rest of her childhood she was beaten, sometimes savagely.

And people are surprised she killed someone who she thought was sleeping with her boyfriend?

her own crime was appalling but it's not unpredictable given what she grew up with.

As is anyone who can make that kind of statement about someone who had a horrendous childhood, committed an awful crime at 18, was sentenced to execution just months after not being a child any more, and then made to serve 30 years on death row so essentially in isolation, and then given two lethal injections which didn’t work meaning she might live out the rest of her life, how long would that be, ten? Twenty? Thirty years? In a vegetative state.

Anyone who can condone that kind of treatment of another human being is no better than the murderers who commit the crimes that lead them here in the first place.

So what did Christa to do deserve Karma arranging for her born with FAS, disabilities, to be left crawling in dog shit, to be orally raped age two, to be endlessly beaten by almost all the adults around her, to be left hungry, to be raped by other men, to be told that if she told anyone her pets would be killed, to be dragged around by the hair, to be burned by an iron by her older sister?

Please do tell. Because surely she must have done something terrible before age two, plotted and carried out some dreadful crime, to have deserved all that from Karma?

And oh yes, among all that to watch her beloved father's mother, the single person who was kind to her in her childhood, slowly deteriorate from cancer until she died when Christa was 12.

Karma really is one hell of a bitch. The sort who ought to be on Death Row, imo.