Christa Pikes is awake and ‘talking’

[wouldntyouwanthelp]

She’s out of the coma and talking to her lawyers. Aibu to think the state of Tennessee can’t possibly try to do the lethal injection again ? Surely not? People on Reddit are suggesting she might need an amputation of one of her arms because of how caustic pentobarbital is.

Christa Pike 'conscious and speaking at hospital' after failed execution in US
https://news.sky.com/share/13595950

I think she is suffering like she made her victim suffer.

If their laws determined she should be executed then a failed execution shouldn't nullify that. There are victims to think about. When you commit her crimes, you can't complain if something goes wrong during your execution.

This isn't to say I agree with executions, there just isn't a valid argument here to block another attempt. Had they succeeded, she wouldn't be talking to her lawyers.. maybe next time, they just do it more quickly.

@Blackwidowsbite
You think someone who was a 10 year old child when they committed murder should be executed? You sound fucking deranged.

There is a profound paradox at the heart of this case: Christa Pike was convicted of an undeniably brutal, premeditated murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995. For decades, her name was synonymous with one of the most notorious crimes in Tennessee history. Yet, because of the state's catastrophic operational failures on 30 September 2026, the discussion has shifted away from her past guilt and into the stratosphere of fundamental constitutional law.

Essentially, it is a freak constitutional accumulator bet where every single low-probability, high-stakes variable had to hit perfectly in sequence:

•Leg 1: The State of Tennessee has to explicitly concede a massive, decades-old constitutional error regarding childhood trauma that they had fought to suppress for 30 years (Odds: Exceptionally low).

•Leg 2: A traditionally conservative federal appeals court (the 6th Circuit) has to actually care enough about that concession to issue an eleventh-hour emergency stay (Odds: Unlikely).

•Leg 3: The Supreme Court majority has to aggressively intervene on the shadow docket to vacate the federal stay of the 6th Circuit, while leaving their legal reasoning completely blank (Odds: Highly probable, but essential for the trap).

•Leg 4: Justice Sotomayor has to write a blistering minority bloc dissent (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson) providing the ONLY reasoned legal text that exists on the final stage of the case and the ONLY blueprint for future constitutional litigation (Odds: Authorship likely, but requires Pike to survive to be potent).

•Leg 5: The execution team has to catastrophically botch the IV lines, causing visible chemical blistering, while still successfully pumping two full lethal doses of pentobarbital into her system, and then calling in EMTs (Odds: Rare operational failure).

•Leg 6: The State of Tennessee has to violate Pike’s Eighth Amendment rights by attempting to deliver a "death by instalments" with personnel utilising a second, separate and consecutive full dose of pentobarbital to 'try again' on the spot, contrary to the State's execution protocol and stretching beyond the narrow, good-faith "innocent misadventure" protections established by the Francis v. Resweber (1947) plurality (Odds: Unlikely, requiring State personnel to violate their own protocol and fly legally blind).

•Leg 7: Contrary to all medical science regarding lethal doses of barbiturates, Christa Pike has to somehow survive the chemical onslaught and end up alive and taken away my EMTs and placed on a ventilator (Odds: Inexplicable anomaly).

•Leg 8: By surviving, the case introduces arguments that: (1) the State of Tennessee misled the Supreme Court of the United States about the readiness of its execution protocols; (2) Justice Sotomayor’s dissent text is transformed from a historical footnote into a prophetic, living record; and (3) the Francis v. Resweber (1947) ruling cannot be applied in this case going forward.

The calculus of this entire chain relies on absolute finality; if the execution succeeds, the legal questions die with Pike. But by surviving the administration of two full lethal doses, Pike’s case has effectively shattered the traditional legal protections states enjoy under Francis v. Resweber (1947). The Supreme Court majority's choice to issue a blank shadow docket order backfired catastrophically the moment the IV lines failed; by refusing to provide a single line of legal justification, they left their own constitutional flank entirely exposed. This strategic silence leaves Justice Sotomayor’s blistering dissent as the only reasoned, authoritative legal roadmap left standing on the record. As a result, the state is no longer defending a decades-old murder conviction. Instead, it is trapped litigating its own operational indifference, the violation of its own protocols, and the terrifying, unprecedented reality of a state-sanctioned "death by instalments".

Anyone who supports the death penalty and pretends that innocent people will not be executed is either

stupid;
dishonest;
sadistic;
deranged

or a mix of all four.

It's a rare thing to boil people down to reductive phrases. But this is one of them.

There are, of course, people who support the death penalty who admit that innocent people will be executed. But that's the price of civilisation. I mean if ew want a perfect society, well.. eggs and omelettes. These are the people I would fear most.

This was not one instance of abuse as a toddler. This is someone who was abused even before birth by Foetal Alcohol syndrome who then spent her entire life being horrifically abused.

The fact that you seek to bend the facts to minimise what happened speaks volumes.

So the state is inflicting the same torture and death on Pike that they are punishing Pike for committing. And that's the "justice" system in Tennessee apparently.

Trained clinicians were not involved, because they are rightly forbidden to assist in executions. I suspect this was down to a combination of sheer incompetence and the poor state of Christa's veins together with her blood clotting disorder.

It only makes sense if you insist everyone reacts the same way to trauma, and deny the existence of the genuine psychopaths.

everyone is affected differently. Many abusers carry on the cycle, they were abused themselves. Many break it.

the brain is a complicated thing. No one knows why one abused child learns abuse is wrong, but another learns it’s normal behaviour and goes on to abuse themselves.

some smokers kids smoke, some abhor it. Some kids were smacked as children, and are fine about physically punishing their own kids. Others would never.

some people have no known history of trauma, but trauma isn’t always active abuse- look at the poor kids in Romanian orphanages where the simple witholding of normal human relationships led to severe psychological damage.

Yes off course what she has been through at a young age has somehow lead her to believe violence and suffering is ok. Yes the state let her down when she should have been protected. Yes her horrific childhood played a part in this. Yes she may be mentally unwell.

Still doesn’t excuse her torturing and murdering someone.

Who says she should have a free pass. Since when was 30 years, mostly in solitary confinement, a free pass anyway?

It wouldn't surprise me if the prison staff involved weren't indulging in a bit of blood lust and sadism of their own, I don't think mere incompetence really explains the situation.

But it still doesn’t excuse her horrific crime!

I mean, I doubt he's a hero as he obviously did something to be imprisoned, but given he's locked safely away from society, then no, I'm not going to be bothered by him killing sex offenders.

Also, killing isn't always a crime, and there are exceptions. I believe self-defence isn't considered criminal, for example.

No it doesn’t excuse her torturing and murdering someone. But it should mean she should not be executed.

I know. It makes no sense.

Apart from all the legal and moral complications I just keep thinking what an absolute mindfuck it must be to be prepared to die with 100% certainty at a specific moment, and then wake up afterwards 😱 just imagine that moment of waking up and trying to work out what's happening...

So your saying that because she has done 30 years mostly in solitary confinement that’s enough punishment?

While there is a lot of talk of "victims" here, how many people are thinking that it's a wider issue ? And that maybe - just maybe - everyone in society is also a victim ? Albeit indirectly.

I wonder how many hundreds - if not thousands - of people in Tennessee are being traumatised and increasingly distressed by this gruesome pantomime ? I mean if the population of Tennessee is comparable to the population of MN, then there will be a lot of people who are struggling to process this charade that seems to have no end.

Of course, if your aim of punishment has fuck all to do with the well being of society as a whole, then who gives a shit ? I mean people could stop being snowflakes.

Crista Pike was accepting of her death.
She was extremely concerned about this very thing happening because of her long history with collapsing veins.
She asked for a firing squad.
She assisted the people trying to get the needle into a vein, explaining the places phlebotomists had been successful before. One of the unsuccessful needles came out bent.
7 times to get a 'vein' which either blew or wasn't in.
She was awake enough to say its burning her arm and was it meant to feel like that.
Their constitution doesn't allow for cruel and unusual punishment.
They massively fucked up.
Big pharma no longer agree to supply the necessary drugs and therefore inferior cocktails and out of date meds have been used in recent times leading to prolonged times between the drugs being given and death.
If the States want to continue using the death sentence as punishment they need to find a quicker way to execute people.

What she did was horrendous but 30 years in solitary confinement then a near death poisoning only to be resuscitated and brought back from the brink I think is quite enough in terms of actual punishment.

Should she be free to enjoy the rest of her life after what she did? No. Send her back to prison for the purpose of keeping her away from other people so she can't hurt anyone else. Absolutely no need for torture and firing squads - its barbaric.

I genuinely hate being the if it was a man person, usually but when child abusers, rapists, murderers etc (who are almost always male) are in the news everyone calls for a long, drawn out torturous execution. She tortured someone to death. I’m actually against the death penalty myself, for all criminals. But I can’t help noticing some hypocrisy in attitudes here?

I guess I’m wondering if this happened to say Wayne Couzens for example, would people be saying he ‘suffered enough’? You could privately think he deserved it, but still say that this is barbaric and not right I guess. If people would genuinely treat other cases the same way then fair enough.

Hope that makes sense, not trying to start an argument but it’s odd to me.

In moral terms, you simply cannot say "You must not kill, and we will regard that as heinous crime deserving of serious punishment, but it's absolutely fine for us to kill, of course". It would make you an utter hypocrite.

The state put that man in front of a firing squad, forcing other men to shoot at him. That in itself is revolting, because of its cold blooded nature. What makes it worse is that the state knew perfectly well that the killing method chosen was not foolproof and could cause unimaginable suffering, but decided to go ahead anyway.

The simple fact is that no civilised society should operate the death penalty. I'm delighted that I live in a country that does not permit it.

Begs the question of how humane the current methods of capital punishment are. The idea being that lethal injection is any “better” than an old fashioned guillotine or firing squad is a strange one. Better for who? The people watching because it isn’t as gory? It’s obviously not better for the recipient.

I’d rather have my head lopped off in one strike than be strapped to a bed and hooked up to IVs waiting to be slowly poisoned. I’ve always thought lethal injection is a terrible method along with the electric chair and hanging.

I am generally for capital punishment in the most serious of cases where there is no doubt of guilt, but it has to be done in a swift manner, otherwise the state is effectively no better than the person they are punishing.

These circumstances are true for large parts of the prison population. They are not exceptional. And now the US is moving so strongly towards forced birth they're likely to see a large increase in both abused children and (in 20 years or so) dysfunctional, violent criminals.