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 don't have sympathy for Christa. I have empathy. Two different things.

I have sympathy and empathy for her, she's clearly a badly damaged individual either by nature or upbringing neither of which were chosen by her. (Or both.) Same goes for Peter Sutcliffe. Same goes for Ian Huntley or Levi Bellfield.

The courts and prison are not there to deal with well adjusted people who were brought up well and have no personality disorders. They are there to protect us from and to attempt the deter the badly adjusted damaged people. People like her are exactly the people the legal system is there to attempt to keep the lid on. (and yes it's not very effective, but nobody had come up with a better way)

Yes. As I said, I believe imprisonment- and certainly solitary confinement- is sufficient. I am not arguing she be released as she is too severely damaged to live in society.
I don't think the death penalty is a deterrent.

Arguably, Norway has come up with a better system. Their prisons are about rehabilitation and therapy, not punitive punishment. They teach prisoners trades, how to cook, manage money, and give them the medical treatment they need, etc.

They have one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world.

So you think damaged people are still culpable amd must still be held responsible for their actions according to the law where they live.

In which case we're in agreement.

What you're disagreeing about is a suitable legal consequence of murder which I made no comment on.

I believe it isn't - that countries with the death penalty aren't any more well - ordered and crime free than countries that don't have it.

With some pregnancies where alchohol/drugs are concerned or childhoods with too many ACEs or too severe, changes in the brain occur where the ability to foresee the consequences of actions are diminished, sometimes severely so.

This doesn't mean that people should be let off crimes.

But intervention early in families such as Pike's might do a whole shit load more to reduce crime than a thousand hangings. She didn't receive any treatment at all for her appalling childhood until she was in prison. Had intervention, support and treatment been in place earlier, the other girl might well be alive - would almost certainly, at a guess.

But it's the US, where the baby is sacrosanct when it's in the mother's womb but the state don't give a shit what happens to it afterwards.

countries with the death penalty aren't any more well - ordered and crime free than countries that don't have it.

Ultimately people who support capital punishment do so because they want to and damn the facts. They don't care if innocent people are executed (in fact some actually believe that for the death penalty to work you have to have the odd mistake). They don't care if the death penalty has any effect on deterring criminals (which it axiomatically doesn't).

No, they just care about bloodlust, and the perverse sense of power that some humans have over others when it comes to life and death.

When cornered, most will obfuscate by demonstrating their lack smarts by confusing a justice system with a string of individual cases designed to provoke a reaction. Usually not-so-subtly wrapped up in whatever brand of racism, sexism or classism they prefer.

"Hard cases make bad law", as I recall reading when I was learning English. Probably a French idea as it's rarely observed here.

Even looking only at the US, you can see that the death penalty is not a deterrent. New Hampshire has the lowest murder rate per capita in the country; it last executed someone in 1939, compared to Tennessee, which has the 4th-highest murder rate per capita.

She didn't receive any treatment at all for her appalling childhood until she was in prison.

Pretty sure she killed the girl at a camp whose purpose to treat people with those issues.

She needed intervention at the point where she was crawling through dog faeces on the floor and being orally raped before kindergarten, no?

No "karma" used in the way you have does not mean that horrible deeds will inevitably mean equivalent retribution and suffering. Just look around the world to see how your cliched use of karma has panned out.

I refer you to my point that advocates of the death penalty don't care that it isn't a deterrent. They don't care much if they get the right person either. Lack of critical thinking, and some rather unpleasant character traits mean they think that if someone is killed (or not even killed, just misgendered) then killing someone back balances something in the universe.

And as for innocents ? Well, "God will know His own",

Obviously once you have accepted the principle of killing people for the state then (as this thread shows) it's mere paperwork to expand the list of offences down from murder to putting the bins out on the wrong day.

I was responding to your claim that she hadn't received any treatment until she was in prison, no?

She didn't receive any treatment at all for her appalling childhood until she was in prison.

I don't think Job Corps is a treatment center, is it? I thought it was an educational training center, with a focus on giving young people from deprived backgrounds a chance at a career.

I'm not sure that they provide any kind of mental health treatment at Job Corps.

OK, so it was help but it wasn't the appropriate treatment that would have stopped her torturing and murdering a girl and then trying to murder a woman in prison. Fair enough.

If you read the reports she was on jobs training, not any sort of treatment.

The point was rather that even if it had been treatment, receiving it at 18 was about 14 years too late.

The attempted murder in prison - there are claims that it was to protect another woman whom Jones (her victim there) was trying to kill, but it all seems murky.

Not an excuse. Fact. In every report I’ve seen from the time of the murder Pike was referred to as a woman and her victim as a girl - despite Pike being a year younger. Language matters.

Patricia Jones was serving a life sentence for stabbing an elderly woman 119 times. She testified in court that Pike had stopped her from killing at least 3 other inmates prior to the incident that led to the attempted murder charge.

It shouldn't have happened, and both Pike and Jones should have been held accountable, but let's not pretend that Jones is an innocent victim. She admitted she wanted to murder Pike's, younger, smaller friend while in court.

https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/court-of-criminal-appeals/2013/m2012-01640-cca-r3-pc.html

No your point was very specifically that she got no treatment until she was in prison. If you'd said "treatment was too late" that would have been accurate.

I don't think you read my post properly. Go back and try again.

She didn't get treatment until prison. Job Corps is not a medical center; it is an educational facility. It is no more a treatment facility than a High School is.

You don't get convicted of attempted murder or if it's self defence or for saving other people's lives.

Didn't you read the link? It's clear she wasn't saving anyone else's life - your link shows Jones was attacked by one inmate and then Pike joined in, plus:

Defendant: They know I... I.... I've gave them all fair warning that I would kill if I ever got near her.

Lisa: Yeah.

Defendant: So, it was a big choker, but I tried!

Lisa: (laughs) Really?

Defendant: I mean, seriously! And you know... I know the difference now between like, pre-meditated [sic] murder and what happened with Colleen.

Lisa: Yeah.

Defendant: Because I definitely pre-meditated [sic] this...

Yeah, I already conceded that, then you moved the topic on to "what your point was".

My reply was extending not contradicting yours.

It's how read it, leastways.

huh? She didn't get treatment until she was in prison. Jobs training is not treatment.

The treatment she got then certainly was too late for her victim, yes.