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

No, I don't support that at all. But you cannot separate it from the existence of the death penalty: it is inescapable that the issue of, as you put it, bleeding the appeal system dry would not arise but for the death penalty. No civilised system should discount or seek to limit the right to bring justified appeals.

You could build a fish farm around the location

I wonder if Pike's lawyers could argue that this case demonstrates that the use of pentobarbital is also a cruel and unusual punishment,

From my reading the current SCOTUS is very much rooted in a back to basics approach to the constitution, and working from what the Founding Fathers would have thought.

It's highly likely they would divine that the Fathers would have considered lethal injection a modern miracle and by no means cruel and unusual.

I mean no matter what laws the US passes, we need to always consider them through the prism of a bunch of white slave owning men who didn't like paying tax.

That’s changing the topic. There may well be innocent the odd innocent person in prison (how regularly this has happened in the last decade I’d have to look into) though with improved technology I suspect less and less.

I’ve made it clear that capital punishment should be reserved for specific cases. In these circumstances I don’t believe appeals should even be an option.

I think the lawmakers of Tennessee have made it pretty clear that they regard the meaning of "cruel and unusual punishment" with a large degree of laxity.

Looks like this thread is coming up with all the answers. Plus the open goal of a fish based pun for this individual.

But there's no proof that the death penalty deters future crimes or lowers murder rates.

That’s changing topic altogether. There may well be innocent the odd innocent person in prison (how regularly this has happened in the last decade I’d have to look into) though with improved technology I suspect less and less.

So you do accept innocent people will be executed ?

Or are you saying you would only support the death penalty if there was never any chance of that happening ?

I know you really don't want to answer yes or no.

I looked into this a lot a couple of years back when a close friend of the family was (rightly) convicted of having horrendous images of children. As cliché as it sounds, we had no idea. He was a genuinely nice man on the surface. He did suffer childhood abuse, which should have been (and was) taken into account when sentencing and treating him.

Because of the utter shock, I went on a bit of a deep dive into it because I needed to know, for my own sanity, how someone like him could do something so horrific, so apologies that I don't have references to back up my point; I looked into it a while ago.

There are a couple of theories, the most accepted being that pedophilia is like a sexuality, in that no one chooses it; it is just who they are. Some research has shown that the instinct we all have to protect children (like how you'd instinctively grab a stranger's child to stop them running into the road, even if it puts yourself in danger of being hit by a car) misfires in pedophiles and links to the part of the brain responsible for sexuality. There is a strong link between pedophilia and early childhood sexual abuse that needs to be explored further. Not all pedophiles were abused, and not all abuse victims go on to become pedophiles, but there is a strong correlation that we have no explanation for as yet.

Either way, it does not excuse their crimes, but it should influence the way we treat pedophiles both in the way of punishment and management of those who go on to commit crimes and in early intervention for those who admit to these feelings and seek help before acting on them.

I suppose you could take the organs of people executed by firing squad. Assuming they don't unaccountably miss, even at short range and with a big target pinned to the heart, like Mikal Mahdi.

Perhaps they could encourage the marksmen by paying them 10% of the profits from selling the other organs?

Ahh those woke snowflakes, attempting to keep us all from descending into the pit of depravity that we all know we would all be in if we didn't have the rule of law and "rights"

I swear some of you would only be happy if we returned to the dark ages. Well we have progressed past that now, thankfully, and it only exists in your fantasies.

Well yes, that's exactly what they are saying, though you have your very own unique interpretation of the word "excuse". What you seem to be saying, in reality, is that people who disagree with you believe that mitigating factors should be taking into account when sentencing in cases like this, and you would be exactly right.

Yes, mitigating factors should mean a mitigation in a person's sentence. That is central to our justice system and, I suspect, the US one also. To take a more obvious example, we don't punish someone who committed a mercy killing in exactly the same way as we punish the Myra Hindleys of this world. Or, indeed, there is Pike's co-accused, who was not given the same sentence as she was.

If you want to campaign against mitigating factors ever being taken into account, crack right on. Your arguments will be fascinating to hear.

Which sounds as if it would help Colleen's Mum. And that's who matters. Not random people on the internet who think the death penalty is barbaric.

@MissFancyDay I think @SerendipityJane was being ironic.

Hmmm. reductio ad absurdum clearly has a time and a place

The power of forgiveness can heal wounds that punishment never can, turning pain and anger into peace rather than more suffering is the best way forward.

I watched something once and i believe it was based on a true story, a bloke sought help for thinking sexual things about children and having urges to do certain things to children and he knew it wasn’t right and so he sought out getting help from professionals as he knew his thoughts about children wasn’t ok, he ended up actually taking his own life because he knew he was a danger to children and he had to keep fighting the sick urges and thoughts he had towards them.

I also saw on GMB it might have been This morning a woman who thought she may have been a Peadophile because of OCD.

It’s the cost of keeping them £1000 per week ++ for 40 years - Southport killer, Manchester arena, cross bow killer, Fred West and Ian Huntley and the likes bloody good riddance! Let’s have a referendum!

That is an utterly offensive thing to say. Check the MN guidelines.

When people are sentenced to prison, deprivation of liberty is the punishment, no more, no less. If you condone other thugs imprisoned with them beating them up and killing them, you need to examine your values very carefully indeed.

Noone has the right to say what will or won't help Colleen's Mum.

She must have though "bye bye world" as she lost consciousness. Then wakes up, what a week later. I wonder what her first thoughts on waking were.

Ok hahaha. That'll teach me to skim read.

It was. For a long time the prosecution refused to accept it, until very recently they admitted that they did. That resulted in a stay of execution which for some reason the Supreme Court overturned without, I think, giving reasons. There's a useful detailed account upthread of what happened after that.

The problem is that homicide statistics in the US since they reintroduced the death penalty shows that it simply is not a deterrent. I guess very few murderers believe, at the moment they commit the offence, that they will be caught, or else they don't care.

You get people with FAS and severe trauma and they very often have huge impulse control issues.

They don't think about consequences. They can't alwasy connect action with consequence .. Especially when they see so much violence unpunished.