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.

  • dou9m@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    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.

    • Prox@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      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/

      The body of evidence overwhelmingly shows capital punishment cases cost substantially more than life imprisonment cases at every stage. While the moral and ethical efficacy of the death penalty may still be debated, from a practical cost perspective, the evidence clearly suggests it is much more expensive for taxpayers than sentencing convicts to life in prison without parole.

      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

      • lepthesr@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        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

          • lepthesr@sh.itjust.works
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            13 hours ago

            The cost savings of extermination vs incarceration. What would you call that and how would you implement that?

            The law?

            • dou9m@lemmy.ca
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              13 hours ago

              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.

      • dou9m@lemmy.ca
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        13 hours ago

        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.

        • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
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          10 hours ago

          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%.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          10 hours ago

          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.

    • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      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.

      • dou9m@lemmy.ca
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        17 hours ago

        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.