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]

So it does read as that classic we want death penality but do not want to actually want to grasp that it is brutal act taking a life done by the state. The irony being if they were less bothered about appearing humane about it they'd probably do a much better job of it.

You also have to face the rather inconvenient fact that at the end of the day, the only excuse for it not being murder is "I was just following orders". Which was how Pierrepoint evaded questions about hanging innocent men.

Pierrepoint executed hundreds of Nazis whose defence was "following orders".

Pierrepoint ended up oppose capital punishment, writing in his memoirs that executing hundreds of people achieved nothing but revenge and never acted as a deterrent.

Aruging Nazi war criminals should not have been hanged is a tough one - as even usually anti capital punishment people sometimes would make exception there for brutal mass murder. I'd note that some of the worst offenders at top like Speer got long sentences and got free - so not sure it was equal punishment all round. I tend to go with the past is different and they do things differently there - ie morality differs and living through circustances is different to reading about them - so no idea how I'd feel if I lived throught it.

Depends on the state but they do have Life Without Parole sentences in US which does mean till they die - so not like they'd ever be out commiting more crimes.

It's a messy topic all round and even here in UK where A More in common survey from early 2025 showed that 55% of British adults support bringing back capital punishment, up from 50% previously.
https://www.thejusticegap.com/poll-reveals-majority-of-britons-want-to-reinstate-the-death-penalty/

You gov polls show voters for right-leaning parties show the highest backing. Roughly 82% of Reform UK voters and 67% of Conservative voters support capital punishment, compared to 35% of Labour voters and 26% of Green voters. It tends to peak when they have been high profile nasty crimes.

It's not on the cards here - thankfully but it's not a settled as morally wrong as many opposed like to make out.

DS who did history GCSE learnt about Timothy Evans - wrongly convicted and hung in 1950 - when we do get it wrong we do not shy away from that in UK - nor do we tend to pretty up brutal facts - I could be wrong but I suspect we wouldn't favor leath injection or try and make out it was even vaugely humane.

It’s all homicide, but execution is by definition not murder. Murder is an unlawful killing with malice aforethought. That is the distinction.

The legality of the Nuremberg trials was and is still something hotly debated tbf. The ‘just following orders’ defense was a legitimate one prior to the Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg established a new precedence there, albeit one applied rather selectively applied.

Pierrepoint ended up oppose capital punishment, writing in his memoirs that executing hundreds of people achieved nothing but revenge and never acted as a deterrent.

Whilst that is true - and the arguments were very well advanced - he rather shat the bed by being paid later to say he'd changed his mind. But then someone who is paid to kill people is likely going to have a different relationship with the truth than someone who doesn't.

Arguing Nazi war criminals should not have been hanged is a tough one - as even usually anti capital punishment people sometimes would make exception there for brutal mass murder.

I think it's important to distinguish between "peace" and "war", sometimes. By definition "war" is a time when "peace" doesn't exist and society operates differently. At a most fundamental level it's why soldiers are allowed to kill people. And I remember discussion when I was growing up that suggested many of my elders who were opposed to the death penalty in peace shed no tears for the executions after the war.

By the same token, speaking for myself, I have zero problem if some idiot waves a weapon around in public and gets shot to death by police as a result. Because being opposed to capital punishment is not (in my case) synonymous with "bleeding heart liberal".

I think there’s an element of that, but that isn’t the whole of it. The problem with looking at the issue when you’re already biased towards one position means that you’re likely to interpret in a way that supports what you want to believe.

Some States are much more efficient than others, but that isn’t newsworthy in the way that failure is. Tennessee is particularly bad at it, but Tennessee =\ America.

States don’t have free rein when it comes to executions. They’re constrained by federal law. So a state with the death penalty can’t just please itself, it also has to please the feds, and federal courts are made up of judges that themselves lean pro or anti death penalty. See the temporary stay placed on Christa Pike’s execution - Tennessee was all systems go until the 6th circuit court stepped in at the 11th hour. So there’s a lot of red tape.

Lethal injection was seen as the least controversial method, in terms of the moral and legal debates. It was also the cost effective option. Despite there being an increasing number of problems with lethal injection, most notably supply issues, Tennessee went for the quick fix in switching to pentobarbital from the three drug cocktail and approving an even lazier protocol. Now because that has failed, Tennessee has to properly tackle the issue and navigate that minefield.

The legality of the trial of Charles I is still debated ....

Of course.

As an aside, rank and file German soldiers weren’t tried at Nuremberg. Major leaders were, but they weren’t ‘just following orders’, they were the ones conceiving and issuing them.

The occupational zone courts were the ones that established that ‘just following (unreasonable) orders’ wasn’t a defense, which meant that lower level soldiers could be tried. Whether they would be tried was, by the rather cynical reading, dependent on whether it was politically expedient to do so.

You also have to determine what constitutes an unreasonable order. The nazis were unquestionably in violation of international laws and treaties. The death penalty is restricted under international law, but it isn’t outlawed. Not that international
law isn’t limited when it comes to enforcement. It’s there to wield when you have the power to enforce it.

By the same token, speaking for myself, I have zero problem if some idiot waves a weapon around in public and gets shot to death by police as a result. Because being opposed to capital punishment is not (in my case) synonymous with "bleeding heart liberal".

I have an issue when it's in the US - because there have been high profile one which are hard to justify - later turned out no weapon and even had police camera showing false evidence being planted. Also death by cop being a thing there also gives me pause.

I'd have fewer issues with it here in UK because people doing shooting are specially trained it is the last resort (partly as guns on UK streets are rarer ) and will be fully subsequntly investigated. Not that is perfect - Jean Charles da Silva de Menezes was clearly unlawfully killed by police or earlier Harry Stanley - someone id the scots man as irish and table leg in bag as a gun and police shot him dead.

But I get the point naunce of actual situations matters and can influence where individual views come out at.

Ultimately though US voters and officals are ones who's views matter here - as it's their country and polices. Tennessee now had two high profile botched excecutions and questions to answer - though TBH not sure how much their voters actually care.

Christa Pike is awake.

https://x.com/bbcnews/status/2107577174609830053?s=46

The woman who was put to death for killing men, apologies I cannot remember her name but she's all over social media. Will she become a marker of history? Given a lot of male killers are not? I know the US legal system is bloody bonkers.

Aileen Wournos?

Nick Broomfield did a series of interviews with her on death row. She claimed she was actually being used as an "avenging angel" by local police to take out sexual predators but I don't know enough about the men she murdered to know if they had any history of violence

Thread on Pike now being awake

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5586365-christa-pikes-is-awake-and-talking

Aileen Wournos's execution was also barbaric. She is another woman who suffered a lifetime of horrendous abuse and neglect. She was living in the woods behind her house and trading sex for food and cigarettes from the age of 14, ffs.

Dragging her around the state to try her for each murder after she pleaded guilty instead of having one case was farcical and was an exercise of mental torture, not justice.

At the time of her execution, she was incredibly unwell mentally. Anyone involved in the psychological torture and execution of that woman should be ashamed of themselves and deserve life in prison themselves.

I think has now for to be a commutation to live without parole.

why ? If you seek another execution it become a a virus with all the focus (and possibly sympathy) with the perpetrator and not the vicitim. I don't think this will help the family and won't feel like justice but possibly cruelty. There would be appeals against another death warrant including may be quite macabre arguments about method of execution again which would bring bad PR on Tennessee and the US.

There will be journalists queuing. up to interview Christa if possible if she faces another execution and it will just become tabloid fodder for next few years.

It is also pretty obvious now that prison staff simply injected pentobarbital into tissue rather than the blood stream so we're pretty clueless medically. There was obviously panic when they literally couldn't find a vein and decided to go ahead any way. Was there pressure for the prison staff to get the job done when obviously there was a n issue?

https://x.com/1bellaprime/status/2107653422866747833?s=46

the victim’s family must be in turmoil. This is an unholy mess - they must have believed this execution represented justice and now not only is the murderer not dead but she is getting medical care and attention for free when they couldn’t afford to travel to see their justice done?

I imagine that is all a bit of a head fuck.

I wonder hiw much the medical costs have been to aid Christa's recovery?

The doctors now maybe cannot continue treatment as it is unethical just to administer treatment in order to prepare for another execution.

Its like the worst parody of a legal drama ever.

Aand again, Tennesee is refusing to release Slammer's skull to her mother. Which is, she's stated, immensely distressing to her.

Colleens mum has been told she'll only get the bit of skull back when christas dead I imagine the poor woman wishes to bury her daughters remains

Its brutal of the state to keep that piece of skull now. Its not like anyone is in doubt what's happened.

The way the state has treated Colleen's family is disgusting, and anyone arguing that Tennessee attempted the execution for Colleen's mother clearly has not looked into the absolute lack of care and compassion she has been given throughout this.

The state of Tennessee wanted to execute Pike because they can. The governor of Tennessee refused to intervene to bolster his reelection chances. None of this was about Colleen's family.

It never is about the victim. It is about power.

Which was how Pierrepoint (or his ghost writer) ended his autobiography,

I’m not arguing it was done to be done for the victim’s family. I don’t know their views on the death penalty or what they thought justice might look like.

it seems odd that the victims family had to crowdfund for travel to this planned execution, I assumed they wanted to go because they agreed with it. I don’t think bereaved families should have to impoverish themselves to see justice.

Feelings about the death penalty aside, the more I read the more I wonder whether anyone is competent in Tennessee.

Apparently Pike is 'angry and confused'.

Not entirely surprising.

I wonder how much it fucks up with your head when you had prepared to die and then woke up

I just can't imagine what it must have been like for her to wake up. I keep thinking about it.

I'm absolutely against the death penalty. It's utterly barbaric. And besides the pain of life in solitary confinement is a huge punishment in itself. If victims families want people to suffer surely this is suffering.

In our modern civilised society we should be addressing why people commit heinous crimes.