Christa Pike, who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection a month ago, is speaking out for the first time, saying she is recovering, “but healing is not the same as being okay.”
“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak,” Pike said in a written statement her attorneys say was dictated to them. “And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”
Pike, 50, was hospitalized after she survived two doses of pentobarbital as the state attempted to execute her on September 30 for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Soon after the failed procedure, Pike was on a ventilator, and her attorneys did not expect her to survive. But she woke up and later began talking and walking with assistance.
She killed someone in 1995, what does executing her now and even failing at that to the point of torture accomplish, if premeditated murder is a crime than how is it okay for the government to do the same as a form of punishment, it feels barbaric and outdated. The only situation I can see it acceptable is if the person is found guilty beyond doubt and their continued existence poses a threat like terrorists who people might try to break out or people who can run their crimes even behind bars
conservatives love execution, it is why red states have it still.
The point of capital punishment is not justice. It is to “heal” the sovereignty of the state, which it deems to have been injured by behavior outside of it’s control. First it’s criminals killing innocent people, then what’s next? The populace killing their oppressors? Honestly the same can be said about the politics surrounding abortion. They don’t care that a pregnancy is terminated, they care that they had no say. The state are to be the only one’s with the power to grant life or death. This is how you reconcile the logical inconsistency of the pro-life people being the same as the pro capital punishment people people. It’s all about the sovereignty of the state. This, incidentally, is also the motivation behind Please Hangseth’s attempt to reestablish public execution.
Yup it’s about establishing the monopoly on violence, back in the day the used the excuse of the mandate of god, now they use the excuse of flag and country
There is the tax burden of keeping murderers alive that nobody is really gonna be jumping out of their seat to pay… but even as much as I dislike the idea of paying for that burden, I dislike the idea of possibly killing an innocent person even more.
It’s more expensive to execute someone than to have them serve life in prison.
https://www.restonyc.com/is-it-cheaper-to-imprison-or-execute/
https://sites.psu.edu/bleonard/2020/11/30/the-death-penalty-v-life-in-prison/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324804378_The_Death_Penalty_vs_Life_Incarceration_A_Financial_Analysis
Don’t worry, the guy you responded to doesn’t want to follow the law and just wants to take people out back and shoot them in the head based on feels
Lol don’t know where that was implied but sure
The cost savings of extermination vs incarceration. What would you call that and how would you implement that?
The law?
I would call it the dystopian reality of capitalism and how it sodomizes “justice”, “the law”, and the basic human decency we should all be afforded.
Buzz words with no point. Didn’t even address the initial claim
Lol okay, sorry I didn’t give you the reply you were seemingly fishing for?
Well yea, the way they do it is beyond absurdly inefficient which can only be presumed for the sake of cruelty. Imo, it would generally more ethical and efficient to just shoot them rather than the insane bullshit the US does currently, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t believe in the death penalty (other than for the most egregious of criminals).
Don’t even get me started on spending life in a US prison though lol, I’d rather get shot than be effectively turned into state property that gets fed garbage for the rest of my life. At that point, it’s a decision between some of the most optimized soul-crushing torture in human history or being given an end that avoids possibly decades of suffering.
The majority of the cost in applying the death penalty isn’t the method of execution, it’s all the administrative/court work to make sure you aren’t executing someone who shouldn’t be, which still allows innocent people on death row at an estimated rate of 4%.
It’s expensive because the pre-trial preparations are more extensive, the trial is longer, death row is more expensive to run and staff, and they get a lot of chances to appeal up to the last minute. Not a lot of the cost comes from the execution method itself.
Which of those things would you like to cut for efficiency? Should we not spend as much on the trials? Make them shorter and speed things up? Should we reduce security on death row? Should we not give them as many chances to appeal?
The only way to make it cheaper is to make it even crueler. Those decades of suffering might end with a pardon, or a acquittal, or a new trial that leads to a reduced sentence. There’s a reason it takes so long.
a lot of prisoners work jobs while incarcerated but that is another can of worms, besides the argument that it takes money to keep prisoners alive so maybe let’s just kill them instead is psychopathic, maybe if the system was designed towards rehabilitation instead of punishment and offered people support to begin with like free healthcare access, education and unemployment benefits, we would have less prisoners to begin with. Also if you read any news you’ll find countless examples of innocent people getting thrown in jails because the corrupt pigs didn’t want to bother doing their jobs or had a vendetta.
I wouldn’t even give them the benefit of a doubt and call them jobs. Let’s be real: it’s generally forced, for-profit labor… AKA slavery. At least in the US.
I totally agree with you for the most part about everything else you said though, I think it came off like I was trying to play the devil’s advocate? If anything, I was trying to say that even that argument doesn’t really warrant the continuation of these executions as it stands. Especially when it costs so much and is clearly so ineffective.