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

" think we are barking up the same tree, the antidote to all of this is better care. Care in society that is lacking."

I agree completely.

Violence and lack of care begets violent people who commit horrific crimes. If we don't care for, protect, and nurture vulnerable children, if we allow a dog-eat-dog violent mentality to grow, the whole of society will pay the price.

Yes, the lawyer admitted to it.

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest…

Come back and tell us that when your daughter has been tortured and murdered!

Why? It wouldn’t help with my loss to see another person dead.

Extraordinary how in one post you are querying whether facts that don't accord with your mindset are proved, yet in the very next post you come up with a wholly unevidenced piece of fantasy.

I wonder how much therapy or medication was actually available to her? Something tells me she was unlikely to have had a lot of money to spare at the age of 18, and I'm quite sure her parents weren't paying out for therapy for her.

I was literally asking the poster a question actually. I was also getting facts about her bipolar as I didn’t know she had that and also wondered when she was diagnosed with it. It was simply asking questions to gain information on Christa.

I really hate the argument that because some people with mental health problems don't act violently, therefore any who do must be bad people full stop. It's like the argument seen all too often in threads about children with ASD/PDA - "my child has ASD and doesn't get aggressive, therefore ASD can never show itself in the form of aggressive behaviour and children with ASD who lash out when dysregulated should be severely punished"

The simple fact is that people are different. Christa Pike has a whole cocktail of mental health difficulties - FAS, attachment disorder, PTSD, bipolar disorder, learning difficulties, all exacerbated by a childhood full of abuse. Just because you can point to ONE person with bipolar who has never (so far as you know) attacked anyone does not mean that Christa Pike's much more serious and complex difficulties could not possibly have been a factor in her crime.

It's only a tactic in defence where there is evidence backing it up, otherwise it goes nowhere.

On the contrary, official accounts say she fully co-operated and tried to point out which were the best points for intravenous access.

Your immediate reaction was to be minimising and dismissive of another poster who shared their unimaginably traumatic experience. It's disgusting, frankly, and really calls into question everything else you say.

I have no idea of the niceties of Tennessee law, that's simply my understanding of one of the arguments her lawyers are making.

Her lawyers also tried to argue for a different method of execution and was refused. It would be a tad rich for the courts to say "Oh, it turns out you were right and we were wrong, and that, as your lawyers predicted, we put you through the hell of preparing for death, submitted you to torture in the process and left you severely maimed. Never mind, we'll have another go and hope that works a bit better." I mean, I know that's not necessarily beyond the US courts, but it would be a shameful response.

Life in a properly run prison, as opposed to death row, isn't necessarily sheer torture. Pike could be given adequate mental health treatment and support for a start. Most people would choose that if it's the only alternative to death.

Respectfully, you are wrong - there are parents of murder victims who don't want their childs killer put to death, then there's people who have never experienced anything like this that want all killers , rapist's etc put to death.

It's something you either fundamentally believe or you don't .

No, you specifically asked questions about whether Christa had rejected treatment or refused to take prescribed medication. That's not an innocent request for information, that's an attempt to say that, if bipolar was a factor ilnthe crime, it was all Christa's fault anyway.

What about empathy?

Do you feel that it is ok for a supposedly civilised nation to psychologically and physically torture a prisoner? To take a limb from them?

I feel that no state doubt that has any moral authority to judge anyone for anything.

No, that is absolutely not what I said. I made the point, which others also have made, that one person's experience of abuse cannot be compared with another. No-one on this thread has claimed to suffer anything comparable to what Christa Pike went through as a child.

What is disgusting is your deliberate mispresentation of the facts.

If I was Colleen’s mother, I would want her dead.

The sentence was execution. A failure to execute doesn’t negate this, and TN will look to reschedule the execution if she recovers to the extent that they can proceed.

There is an established precedence of this. A survivor of a botched execution, I believe it was an electrocution, attempted to have the death sentence overturned. He failed in this, and the execution was successfully carried out later. I do think Christa Pike’s lawyers have a strong case for a commutation, but it isn’t going to be a straightforward or guaranteed win.

TN I imagine will want to proceed. It’s a solidly Republican State, and the governor likely to be elected, Marsha Blackburn, is strongly pro death penalty (she is advocating for firing squad to become an approved method of execution, in light of repeated issues with the lethal injection. Additionally, Christa Pike is particularly notorious. Her case was HUGE when it happened in 1995. I suppose a UK parallel would be Ian Huntley - she like he is especially reviled. I believe TN will likely double down to try and get it done.

I can't talk about Broadmoor but I can say Carstairs (the Scottish equivalent) is ok.
Very much a secure hospital rather than a prison.

No, you minimised, and completely dismissed a poster's unimaginable abuse, who shared she'd suffered sexual and physical abuse daily from age 2 to 14, the physical abuse being so severe she has epilepsy due to it.

You said you'd 'put money' on the fact that her upbringing wasn’t as bad as Pike's, and 'at least you were able to escape at 14'.

The lack of empathy in that response is utterly gobsmacking.

Absolutely agree and appreciate you explaining…it was just the “ strangeness” of it all seeing the ambulances arrive that just seemed so bizarre to me x

Thank you 🙂

Maybe you should have been her lawyer. Seems you think you know everything about everything.

Thats an assumption. I was actually just asking questions. I know about bi polar and have worked with it I also have a friend who has it and I know there was a time she didn’t want help and support and didn’t take her meds and then had manic psychotic episode. I was getting the facts. I even explained that to the poster I was quoting. Didn’t even quote you but you continue to go on.

You also by the way contradict what you say as I’ve quoted but then some other bell end started belittling me for it.

How lovely that she's still alive and talking. It's a shame her victim doesn't get the same luxury.

I don't think it's lovely (of course you are being sarcastic) as she has pneumonia, no movement in her arms and a host of other medical issues. She was more harshly judged than her co-defendant who, while slightly younger, is a man. We have a better understanding of the impact of FAS, neglect and brain development these days, which doesn't excuse Pike's appalling crime, but does, I hope, mean the death penalty wouldn't be the sentence today. The death penalty is about revenge and is abhorrent.