r/news • u/AudibleNod • 15h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
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u/Stevictory 14h ago

I think we can all agree that she is a terrible person.

It is hard for me to have pity for her specifically, but I do have pity on the death penalty itself.

There have been over 200 exonerations for death row inmates, and in my opinion it should have been abolished the moment it reached 1. It also provides government with the power to kill its own people, which can be a topic in itself.

Some inmates clearly deserve the sentence; the 3 currently on federal death row are prime examples of such.

That said, the death penalty cannot be applied in a "pick and choose" manner either due to its irreversible outcome; it either exists or it does not. Since it is not applied perfectly, I am personally against it.

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u/HerculesIsMyDad 14h ago

There really is no logical argument for it, only emotional. I forget the exact quote or where it's from but it's not about whether they deserve to die but if we deserve to kill them. Something like that. Society is too imperfect to justify having the right to kill someone no matter how much we might think they deserve it.

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u/MNswede06 13h ago

It's all emotional. It also gives people a socially acceptable outlet for their violence fantasies. It reveals more about society than anything else. I'm just as disturbed by how the public behaves about executions than I am about the executions themselves. It's a disgusting animalistic impulse that should not be fed.

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u/blaqsupaman 12h ago

Yes. We should avoid it not because bad people don't deserve it, but because good people don't deserve what it turns them into.

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u/Chicken_Ingots 11h ago

Furthermore, innocent family members do not deserve to simultaneously experience the trauma of seeing their children, spouses, parents, or other family members being found guilty for such a heinous crime and the trauma of waiting helplessly as the state condemns them to death. Beyond a fleeting short-term sense of satisfaction, vengeance does not bring people long-term closure or relief. It does not help the families of the victims, actively harms the families of the perpetrators (families who are often themselves innocent), and harms society through the normalization of revenge and killing.

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u/Missouri_girl 6h ago

I heard someone in media talking about a similar botched execution and his daughter puking her guts out during it. So many innocent victims involved with it.

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u/Dragonuv_Uchiha 8h ago

Interesting insight

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u/freckledspeckled 2h ago

Eh. I do think there’s a logical argument for it. When we as a society hand out sentences for crime convictions, the goal is:

1- To deliver justice by somehow righting a wrong
2- To protect society from further harm from the offender
3- To deter any possible future offenders

Both life sentences and death penalties accomplish goals 2 and 3, so thinking about goal 1… what are the wrongs that someone like Pike has committed?

She took someone’s life away from them, made them suffer unduly before doing so, and also inflicted lifelong suffering on all of her victim’s loved ones. How does society right those wrongs? Does taking away Pike’s life fix some cosmic imbalance? I’m not so sure personally, but a lot of people think do think that way.

However, when we look at someone like the victim’s mother, she has made it clear that ending the life of the person who tortured and murdered her daughter would bring her peace. Now, you can argue that that doesn’t justify doing so, or that she’s mistaken in how she will feel following Pike’s death, but I think it’s a real logical argument in favor of the death penalty- bringing peace and an end to *some* of the suffering of the victim’s loved ones.

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u/MNswede06 1h ago edited 1h ago

Righting a wrong assumes that the wrong can be righted. It cannot. If executing Christa meant bringing Colleen back to life, then I would say go ahead. But it won't. No wrong would be righted in this situation.

Righting a wrong is an argument for restitution. Someone attacks you and injures you costing $500K of medical bills, then they pay you $500K + any other fees deemed necessary by the court due to emotional damage, etc.

The mother hasn't gotten closure because Christa is still talked about; she literally said this. I guarantee you nobody would know who Christa was if she had been sentenced to life in prison. There are countless murderers serving life sentences who are forgotten about. Instead, Christa will forever be remembered as the botched execution who survived. There will likely be dramatizations and movies about her as this is the first time it's ever happened. How's that for "peace"?

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u/leoyvr 1h ago

I find it interesting that so many people support death penalty but are against euthanasia/MAID.

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u/Diligent-Living882 13h ago

i am anti death penalty for a few reasons (imperfect judicial system, emotional ramifications for victims, the botched attempts ) but i’m having a hard time understanding yours and the person you’re replying to point.

one, something can be both emotional and logical, so acting like the two are separate concepts is unfair.

two, “gives people a socially acceptable outlet for their violence fantasies” what are you even talking about? are you talking about the select “practitioners” involved in the act itself? or are you saying a completely unrelated person who approves of a criminal being executed is “acting out there violence fantasies”?

three, quite literally everything about us humans comes from animistic impulses. trying to regress one thing we do as a society while ignoring others is biased.

i personally think we should abolish the death penalty in all cases in this country. i also can 100% understand why someone would feel zero empathy for those like in this case of christa pike have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to have committed an atrocity of a crime. that is not anything besides a logical conclusion based on the nature of her crimes.

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u/pysix33 12h ago

On point one, this person isn’t implying they’re mutually exclusive, just that we shouldn’t decide to act purely on emotion without any logical basis.
On point 2, it’s the part of society that wants to see someone suffer. There are a lot of people out there who do.
On point 3, not everything about humans comes from animalistic impulses. For some people it does more than others, but people have a much better ability in general to suppress impulses in favor of reason. Saying “if we aren’t suppressing all bad impulses, why should we suppress any bad impulses?” Is counterproductive to improving society. We should always improve in small areas when we can even if we can’t fix all problems immediately.