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]

I couldn’t have put my thoughts better than this.
yes, Christa committed a heinous crime. I feel absolute sympathy for the victims family, it’s awful, but the perpetrator has been punished, and is now lingering between life and death. If there is a God, then she can be judged by them in the hereafter. I hope her passing is quick and peaceful. Surely, everyone involved has suffered enough.

Agree. In almost every report I’ve seen Pike has been referred to as a woman, while her victim was described as a girl. Language matters and in circumstances like this it can be used to confer judgement.

Well no, someone who thinks someone is deserving of an unpleasant fate is nowhere near on the scale of someone who actually goes and doles one out. They are light years apart.

Was Christa Pike a victim? Yes, of course. You can acknowledge that and sympathize for the child she was, and simultaneously feel no sympathy for her current condition because of the woman she became.

The woman she became at 18 was the direct result of the child she was. Direct as a rockets flight.

The person she was before this botched execution seems likely to have been different from the report after treatment and medication.

The victim was a young woman and Pike is now a middle aged woman. Sick of PP’s making excuses for this murderer.

Pike was younger than her victim. People saying her victim was a "young girl" is emotive and inaccurate. People are labelling her like she is a child killer. She was not.

Sure. What happened to her may explain what shaped her psychologically, but it doesn’t excuse or justify what she chose to do to her victim. It does not mean that anyone owes her sympathy now, or that it wasn’t appropriate for her to receive the death sentence according to Tennessee law.

Not only did she murder Colleen Slemmer, but she was also convicted of attempted murder of another inmate years into her sentence (for calling her ‘fried chicken’, per her own words) and given another 25 years.

I don’t personally feel anything towards Christa Pike either way, and nor do I have particularly strong feelings about the death penalty. I do feel sympathy for Colleen Slemmer’s mother and stepfather, who have been massively let down by the state of Tennessee. Regardless of how you feel about the death penalty, if a state has it then it has a responsibility to not botch it.

Was Christa Pike a victim? Yes, of course. You can acknowledge that and sympathize for the child she was, and simultaneously feel no sympathy for her current condition because of the woman she became. the woman she became? You mean in the ten months and two days between her still being a child and committing the murder? Or the 30 years after that which she spent on death row?

It always amazes me how much people state that people aren’t mature enough to be responsible for their lives. Don’t get married, have children, make financial decisions because the brain apparently doesn’t mature until some arbitrary age, it used to be 25, it’s about 38 now apparently, and that is supposed to hold until a crime is involved, and then all common sense goes out of the window.

Let’s not pretend that this was a grown woman who murdered an innocent child as people on here seem to be implying.

The crime she committed was horrific. We actually don’t know much about the woman, yes, her victim was older than she was, and therefore was apparently a woman, who she murdered, but we do know she was also part of this institution for troubled youth, so likely had troubles of her own. Who knows, maybe she could have ended up down a similar route, we just don’t know. But either way people are talking about Christa pike as if she was a middle aged woman who murdered a young girl. She wasn’t.

She was younger than her victim.

Moreover it happened thirty years ago.

Anyone who says that they’re the same person at 50 as they were at 18 is lying.

Your upbringing partially makes you the young adult you become, and the rest of your life makes you the ultimate adult you become.

She is the adult she is now because of the life she’s led in prison. Which happened because of the crime she committed. Had she not committed the crime perhaps she would have been a different person. We just don’t know.

But having already served her sentence, and 30 years is a life sentence, there is 0 justification for execution. I don’t give a shit whether it’s what the law states. The law is wrong. Morally and ethically.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. And we don’t live by the laws of retribution, so this has nothing to do with the parents of her victim. She’s served a sentence already.

I really think you underestimate the extent to which ACEs affect the brain. An overload of stress hormones physically changes key brain structures in a developing child. Brain damage, you could call it.

Abuse, violence and trauma begets yet more abuse, violence and trauma in families the world over, because we seem to be unable to help people break the cycles of generational abuse and violence. But I’m fairly certain just exterminating people (especially when you fail to achieve it and leave them in a critical state in hospital) is not part of the solution.

Who is making excuses? I haven't seen anyone suggesting she did not deserve punishment. But surely 30 years on death row is more than sufficient punishment given all the circumstances.

So civilised!

I kind of wish that Pike’s victim could be left out of this. Let her rest in peace.

Your several posts are a little disturbing. You’re just a bit TOO interested in all this aren’t you, our little resident sadist.

You’re a very sick individual

I don’t underestimate it at all. I simply do not share your opinion that her childhood experiences make the sentence that was imposed inappropriate 🤷🏻‍♀️

Whether she deserves or doesn’t deserve her current condition does not factor into my opinion on the matter. I’m not celebrating it any more than I’m sympathizing with her. I don’t care about her personally. My issue is with the incompetence of the Tennessee DOC.

Cool. I’m nowhere near invested enough to get into some great philosophical debate over the death penalty, or to discuss the merits of what Pike is, was, or could have been.

Do I think she was given an inappropriate sentence in Tennessee, taking her childhood into account? No. You are of course free to feel differently.

I fully agree. Of course it's terrible what she did but I also feel sick about what happened to her. No child should suffer as she did either. And now this as an adult.

What cakeandcardio said.

Each to their own. I’m so glad I don’t live in a place where brain damaged people are put to death. It’s such a bad look for the US.

Christa has such a horrific start in life which makes indirectly led to someone else having a horrible end to their life so young.

This whole debacle is why I also can’t stand the (mostly right wing) politicians who bang on about the falling birth rates as a moral problem and make having kids sound like a prerequisite for everyone. It’s NOT!

Aside from the fact some people don’t want kids, and would be miserable having them- many people are not fit to be parents. This drive to encourage all and sundry to have more kids is extremely stupid and myopic. Yes there are economic challenges as a result of an ageing population but it’s a terrible reason to drag kids into the world to supposedly solve that.

Maybe it’s because I worked in schools and social services in both the US and UK, but I really feel as if at least a third of parents shouldn’t have bothered.

I just recently saw a video on YouTube about a woman who left her 4 kids ranging from 2 months to 9 years old at home alone to go on a cruise. The poor 9 year old was holding the baby so gently and carefully like a mother when the police turned up. She was also terrified.

The mother was disgraceful but also they clearly all had irresponsible fathers that she couldn’t leave the kids with them.

Theres just so many kids being dragged up and neglected or abused then their untreated trauma goes onto cause serious damage to society.

dont you think all prisoners on death row had an awful start to life though?

Probably but she seems to have had a worse life than most.
It's why I am so pro-choice. Christa's mum clearly never wanted her.
I myself would find solitary confinement in a tiny cell far worse than death, so I think 30 years of that is adequate punishment for a horrific crime.

This is the report
https://nashvillebanner.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Dr.-Brand-Forensic-Psychological-Evaluation_Christa-Pike_07.29.23.pdf

Be warned: It's unpleasant reading, even for people who've had experience dealing with people with distressing backstories. There are worse, but the unrelenting nature of her childhood is bad.

The only reason Christas getting sympathy is because she's a woman if this were a man you'd all be ripping them to shreds 😂😂 also I wonder how these people would feel if it was their daughter that was tortured and murdered?

Yes, men are raped far less than women.
I don't have sympathy for Christa. I have empathy. Two different things.

If my daughter were tortured and murdered, I would want to torture and murder the perp. That does not make it right or civilised.