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

How very old testament......Christians don'f do vengence

Exactly this. Their position is very understandable but they should not get to decide. She's spent years waiting to die and all of her adult life in solitary confinement. She's been torture and will have life long injuries including a possible amputation and brain damage. Attempting another execution would be beyond cruel and unusual punishment. She survived the process and has had a tortured and horrific life - enough. It may well be that the execution doesn't give Coleen's mother peace. Maybe victim advocacy would give her daughter's death greater meaning than the death penalty?

This took place last year in South Carolina. Mikal Deen Mahdi was executed by firing squad on April 11, 2025. Unbelievably, they botched it. Autopsy findings concluded that the shots missed the heart and instead pierced the liver, pancreas and lower lung instead. The think he was in severe pain for 60 seconds before he died which is well outside the acceptable limit although arguably better than what Chrita Pike has suffered.

A lot of people are in severe pain before they die - often for much longer than 60 seconds, and often they didn't do anything to bring it upon themselves. I don't think that's a particularly big deal. It's not like they deliberately set out to torture him. Besides, having murdered three men, and attacked and stabbed a corrections officer while attempting escape, I'm not particularly bothered by the poor wee lamb spending a measly 60 seconds suffering.

Although a bullet through the head at point blank range would be better, if they're going to shoot people as a method of execution.

All this thread does is to prove that sick and twisted folk walk among us and it's not necessarily just the one's on death row.

There are people who have lost a child in the most horrendous of ways , by the worst people AND they still don't want the perpetrators to face death - that's got to tell you something, hasn't it? Some people just want death and vengeance at any cost, even if they are not connected in any way to the victims - it's a mindset , in my opinion.

Unfortunately yes a lot of people are in pain for much longer. But it's a different thing when we're putting someone to death. This isn't an unavoidable tragedy that everyone is trying to prevent, this is a Government killing someone and choosing to put them in pain. It's incredible when we decide that the fit and proper punishment for murder is to murder the perpetrator. It also shows that the Government is so incompetent that they can't carry out an execution properly regardless of how they do it. Is it that impossible to get trained marksmen shooting at point blank range to shoot in the correct location? Are they not using trained marksmen and going with someone who's had 30 minutes training with a rifle and watched a YouTube video? I don't know but we have a high level of responsibility to get it right when the Government is choosing to put people to death.

The things these people have done are awful. They deserve serious punishment and extreme steps to keep the public (and possibly other inmates) safe but most people don't just have a perfectly normal life and mental health and then decide to do horrific thing. They're sick individuals who should have received help a long time ago. I don't know much about Christia Pike's childhood or schooling but how did nobody notice her behaviour and get her some help? Didn't a teacher at school see anything?

Of Pikes crime: She and her boyfriend "bludgeoned her (a 17 year old girl) to death" "Pike thought Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend."

"When Slemmer tried to flee, Pike sliced her stomach with the box cutter. ... As Slemmer begged for her life, Pike repeatedly kicked her in the face. Pike then cut Slemmer’s throat as she begged for mercy," the Tennessee Attorney General's Office wrote in court documents.

After Slemmer made one final attempt to escape, Pike smashed the back of her head with a rock, they wrote. Shipp also carved a pentagram into Slemmer's chest, and Pike later showed off a piece of Slemmer's skull to a friend.

A Tennessee Grounds Department employee first mistook her body for the corpse of an animal because of how badly she had been beaten, according to court records."

I'm not surprised she was given the death penalty. Regardless of her background, she behaved like a mindless, brutal animal. There is no fixing that kind of grotesque animal mindset.

However, given she's done 30 years for this horrific, pre meditated slaughter and experienced torture as they finally tried to execute her, I think most reasonable people would agree that's probably enough actual retribution.

Because justice/retribution matters a LOT for those who have been harmed/murdered and for their loved ones.

And it matters hugely that society sees that retribution/justice is carried out.

"May Martinez, Slemmer's mother, told WBIR-TV that her daughter loved roller skating, computers and playing old games with her family "She was a nerd," Martinez told the station. "But a good nerd."

Martinez traveled to Tennessee for Pike's planned execution.

"I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting," she told WBIR-TV in 2021. "There's not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was."

She needed to be harshly punished, regardless of her reasons or background.

It follows that in places where the death penalty is allowed, she deserved the death penalty. And if you are going to give the death penalty as a verdict, it should be carried out within a couple of weeks, not 30 years.

Anyway, I doubt they will try to execute her again. However, since she took a life, deliberately, barbarically and savagely, she should have to stay in prison for the rest of her own.

Colleen's mother deserves to know that the people who tortured her child to death, who gave her a filthy, bloody, brutal end, will never be free again.

I think most people will be ok with Pikes dying in prison. And though most wouldn't wish the pain on her, we won't bother feeling too sorry for her.

(PS, if you're pretending you'd be ok with Pikes living in your town, even all these years later, you're lying).

Rest in peace Colleen. I hope your poor mum finds some peace too.

…but the State assumes it has the right to send people, often forcefully, off to fight wars on its behalf with risk of certain death…

Executing her daughter's murderer will not end her suffering.

I do think they ought to ask the victim's relatives what they want, and let that be a deciding factor. Giving them some control in this situation would be a good thing, I think.

Yet another reason to oppose the death penalty.

Some crimes absolutely deserve death. And the world would be better without some people.

But the State cannot be trusted, corruption, and as demonstrated here, ineptitude means that I just don't think Governments can be trusted with this.

Not your place to decide that and you have no idea at all what would bring peace to the mother of a 17 year old who was tortured to death.

The mother of the slaughtered girl wanted the savage who tortured her child to death to be executed. She made statements to that effect.

Now that the execution has failed, I hope Colleen's mother finds peace somehow.

And ?

I was replying to someone who mentioned "the soul".

You totally avoided the point of my post. That for Christians ( many of them anyway), to forgive is the thing to do. And for them not to forgive means downward direction at the judgement/being left behind at the Rapture.

Technically, seem to me that any Christian who ignores what Jesus said means they are not doing anything good for their own soul.

As I said, I am atheist, but we are talking about the evangelical USA here.

I am also anti war.

Many Christians believe strongly and fully in an Old Testament God who believes wholeheartedly in an eye for an eye. Your belief or lack of it won't bother them at all, and your opinions on other people's religion won't affect them. Clearly, lots of Christians are good with the death penalty, and this how many angels can dance on the head of a pin stuff is not actually important, or revelatory.

All this talk of how the victim’s family must feel, what the victim went through etc is just manipulative.

Nobody is going to dispute what the victim’s family went through.

But two wrongs don’t make a right.

People say that murder is wrong. And then they condone it because it’s state sanctioned? Because that’s all execution is. State sanctioned murder.

People aren’t actually sentenced to death in the states. They’re sentenced to life in near solitary confinement, and then, at some point maybe 30 years later, they’re put to death.

Of course a parent of a victim might want their child’s killer to die, but that is why the family does not decide the punishment. Because they’re not objective.

The death penalty isn’t about justice, it’s about retribution. The fact that many people on death row are there long enough to die of natural causes is proof of that. It’s pure sadism and nothing else, and personally I believe that the kinds of people who can become executioners are probably the people who are abusing their wives and children at home. No decent human being executes another, they’re no better than the murderers they murder.

As for whatever happened in 2001, you put a load of violent criminals in a situation together, and violence is inevitable. The person she tried to kill was in the process of trying to kill someone else. And when you’re in for violent crimes and you’re going to die anyway what do you have to lose?

Apparently a third of executions in the states in the last year have gone wrong. That’s not justice. It’s not punishment. It’s barbaric.

And for those talking about euthanasia and how humane it is, there are some horrendous stories from the likes of dignitas about how badly things can and do go wrong with assisted dying, but the media chooses not to publish those in the name of so called right to die.

Why? Why does this person deserve the mercy of living to an old age? What mercy did she show to her victim? Why should people not die for their crimes?

People seem to be very quick to suggest that the family should have a say when that family are calling for the perpetrator to be executed.

I I have Absolutely 0 doubt that if that same family were saying that because they believe that God is real and forgiving, the perpetrator should be forgiven and set free there would be uproar.

People support what the victim’s family want when in truth it justifies what they, as members of society, want. If the family of a murder victim called for clemency people wouldn’t be so quick to be supportive.

So let’s not pretend that the people saying that Christa pike should be executed because it’s what her family wants are saying so because of that. If Coleen’s mother called for Christa to be set free the pro execution brigade would suddenly have a different take.

Or crushed her skull in like she did to her victim.

So you’d be ok if she moved in next door to you and your family? If not, why not?

Ahh right. So then it comes down to what a Christian is then. OT or NT. Or as seems to be the case, keep the OT bits folk like, and ignore the NT bits they don't like.

The eye for the eye bit was about slavery by the way. So I assume any Christians who agrees with that also agrees with slavery.

Or as Ghandi said, " “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

And yup. I know that quote is attributed to him, but not recorded.

You do know that there’s middle ground between execution and welcoming someone into your neighbourhood don’t you?

It’s entirely possible to acknowledge the horror of what someone has done, to believe that they should never bee freed but to still not believe that state sanctioned murder is justified.

It astounds me that so many people trot out the justification that 18 is still young and the brain is not yet fully developed when someone does something stupid. Drives too fast, makes a stupid financial decision, behaves recklessly in other ways which have consequences albeit not such long-term ones. But when it’s a horrendous crime the brain development is seemingly inconsequential and no punishment is too severe.

Christa Pike had a horrendous childhood. She was 18 when she carried out the crimes she did. And nobody is disputing that those crimes weren’t horrific, they absolutely were,. But it’s telling that the child who committed those crimes alongside her was deemed to be too young to face the death penalty for those crimes simply by being ten months younger than her. Ten months.

What do people think happens on someone’s 18th birthday which suddenly turns them into an adult fully capable of facing punishments for a crime they wouldn’t have faced if they’d committed it the day before?

He should have faced the death penalty too. So are you suggesting she is just left in prison for the rest of her life? How is that reformation or rehabilitation?

What an absolute mess this case is. They tried to kill her and then saved her life - just to try killing her again?

No she's been very caring towards other people.

She's had a horrific life, seizures, abused from a baby, by grandmothers boyfriend, abused by her mothers boyfriend, raped at 11 by a guy, school reported that when she developed an infection, raped in a park at 17, bipolar, the place where she met the boyfriend, friend and the girl they murdered sounds horrific, everyone was carrying knives. Her boyfriend threatened her with a knife, yet she saw him as the only person who'd protected her.

Jesus I actually feel sorry for her.
No way should her past be ignored. I don't know that she should ever be released but I think she needs a secure hospital and care
Christa Pike

It’s barbaric enough keeping them on death row for as long as they do so they have to sit with a torturous death sentence looming over them for decades. The fact this failed should (but won’t) make the remaining states wake up to the sheer inhumanity.

YABU. As were they to take her to hospital and spend taxpayers money saving her life. She was being executed! She was supposed to die, that was the whole point. They should have found another vein elsewhere and given her a third dose. Or if she was unconscious and dying just let nature take its course. Makes a mockery of the system to give her lifesaving treatment after trying to execute her.