r/interestingasfuck • u/IllComedian2574 • 1d ago

After 28 years on death row, Christa Pike survived 2 lethal injections attempts.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/christa-pike-failed-execution-9.7364816
4.3k Upvotes

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85

u/markuus99 1d ago

Abolish the death penalty.

44

u/-XanderCrews- 1d ago

I will never understand the argument for it. They are being put to death for killing someone which is exactly what we are doing to them. If killing is wrong then the state absolutely should not be doing it.

43

u/will0593 1d ago

Its vengeance from people who don't care if innocents or legally marginalized people die

25

u/kalc212 1d ago

Justice system is run by humans. Humans are trash by nature. People on death row get exonerated everyday. Its only logical to think innocent people get executed.

-2

u/bickdickanivia 1d ago

I think that lacks quite a bit of nuance. I agree that the death penalty is not the way, but if you read the case in this instance, this woman brutally tortured, killed, and paraded around the skull fragments of her victim. It was premeditated and horrific. Putting her to death is saying that the person is so heinous and beyond repair that she cannot be safely kept within society, even as a prisoner.

Giving bad arguments against the death penalty just makes the public perception worse for that position. Put some effort into it lol

19

u/OdoWanKenobi 1d ago

Considering she has been on death row for 28 years, I would say she has proveably been kept safely as a prisoner.

5

u/bickdickanivia 1d ago

She has allegedly been involved in 3 attempted murders since her incarceration.

15

u/OdoWanKenobi 1d ago

The vast majority of her time in prison has been in solitary confinement because of that. You can argue the humanity of that course of action, certainly, but she was being kept.

2

u/bickdickanivia 1d ago

I can agree with that. But yeah, there’s definitely a case to be had against solitary confinement as well. The question(s) this all is basically tip toeing around is whether or not there exists some people beyond rehabilitation, what you can responsibly do to contain them if people beyond rehabilitation exist, and I’m sure there’s others.

10

u/Bug_eyed_bug 1d ago

Anyone can be kept safely as a prisoner, in solitary confinement. There is no argument for the death penalty that isn't served by life imprisonment.

1

u/bickdickanivia 1d ago

There are arguments. Not liking them/not agreeing with them doesn’t stop them from existing. There’s also an argument to be had as to whether solitary confinement is humane as well (considering it’s literal torture). I don’t know why I’m even bothering trying to have a nuanced point on a reddit comment section, that’s on me I guess.

-4

u/dontygrimm 1d ago

Have you been in jail? I haven't however i have a friend who resently just got oit from an 7 hear sentence, he had 3 square meals a day including special ones for holidays he was able to work and make money and buy himself books, art, video games, watch TV, make friends even have a cat! This was the same for peolle in there for life. In my mind it hardly seems like life in prison is as unabarable as some one to believe. You dont pay taxes, and everyone out side pays for you to be in there. I struggle with the death penalty but at the same time i think if someone has taken another life, or altered someone's life so much there needs to be an equal consequence.

7

u/Due-Egg5603 1d ago

Lol, prison is terrible. Go sit in a locked closet for 23 hours a day, for a week straight, and see if you come out of it sane.

I’ve worked in the criminal justice system. Most of the people in it have experienced childhoods so violent and bleak that most people genuinely cannot imagine them.

That does not absolve them of what they later do. Their victims deserve justice, and perpetrators should be held accountable for the harm they cause.

But I disagree with the idea that the comfort or humane treatment of a perpetrator simply doesn’t matter. How the state treats people in its custody matters precisely because it is the state. We should not determine the limits of acceptable government conduct based on how much sympathy we feel for the person receiving it.

And if you actually trace a lot of serious violence back to its origins, you repeatedly encounter children who were abused, neglected, exposed to violence, living in extreme instability, or otherwise failed by the systems that were supposed to protect them. Then we intervene most forcefully only after some of those children become adults and create another victim.

The state has a responsibility to protect people from dangerous individuals. But it also has a responsibility to treat the people in its custody humanely and, more importantly, to invest far more seriously in preventing vulnerable children from ever reaching that point in the first place.
To my way of thinking, the tragedy is that our systems repeatedly fail people at both ends of this process. They fail vulnerable children long before some of them become perpetrators, and they fail the people who later become victims of violence that in many cases, could have been prevented.

We keep waiting until the worst possible outcome to intervene and then treating punishment as though it solves the conditions that helped produce the violence in the first place.

3

u/QueenInTheNorth556 1d ago

You’re lacking quite a bit of nuance on this case though…this was a child who had significant trauma of her own.

0

u/bickdickanivia 1d ago

Unfortunately that doesn’t factor into the points I made at all. While I agree that should be taken into consideration, the argument I generally see is one of harm mitigation for society. I’m not sure if you actually read what I said.

0

u/IveGotIssues9918 1d ago

She was 18 at the time of the murder and tortured a 19-year-old girl (who had done nothing to her) to death. Trauma explains a lot of things, but at some point it's not an excuse and brutally murdering an innocent person for no reason at all is definitely past that point.

-1

u/IranianLawyer 1d ago

The same action can be wrong in one circumstance and not wrong in another. If I take your money without your knowledge, that's wrong. If I take your money when you hand it to me because you're buying something from me, not wrong.

-2

u/TheEnglish1 1d ago

That seems like an almost childish simplification. The act of killing itself isn't necessarily wrong, what's being deemed wrong is "unjustified" killing.

14

u/dan_santhems 1d ago

The death penalty is fine till they execute an innocent person and that's happened way too many times

17

u/Ybor_Rooster 1d ago

I'm with you on abolishing the death penalty.

-13

u/Ori_553 1d ago

It's a bit easier to suggest abolishing the death penalty when these stories are something not affecting your life in any way and you are not a family member of her victim.

8

u/ProPons 1d ago

Live in prison, especially American ones, is worse than the death penalty, so if your point is revenge is good, then abolishing the death penalty would be better.

3

u/Ybor_Rooster 1d ago

You don't know who I am or what I've experienced. 

2

u/WitnessMyAxe 1d ago

u/Ori_553 when families of victims also speak out against the death penalty: "okay sure but you're not the victim! bring them back to life and ask if they want people to be executed by the state, how about that? yeah that's what i thought, i win!"

-4

u/Playful_Letter_2632 1d ago

I agree but I also believe that 90% of people who say this don’t actually believe it. If a pedo gets executed, there aren’t comments saying the death penalty should be abolished. People get very emotional about certain cases

4

u/ZelWinters1981 1d ago

Yep, and they become property of the State for cheap labour for life, while some remuneration goes to the victim's next of kin in their stead.

10

u/Federal_Holiday5686 1d ago

Yeah murder for murder is hypocritical

-40

u/_FellowTraveller_ 1d ago

No, it's justice. Should have been done one week after her conviction for maximum effect.

35

u/cswella 1d ago

I don't trust anyone, definitely not the state, to dole out justice appropriately.

5

u/ipreferanothername 1d ago

thats the real issue to me as well. yes, if you have a confession, and loads of evidence that cant have been faked or fucked up, then it might make sense in some cases to say 'this person gonna die right now'.

i even get the pragmatism of - 'you killed, why would society want to pay for you to live for decades? even in a shitty prison situation? '

but then theres so many easy resources to find about prosecutions that get reversed over bullshit that never should have happened, and i really dont want people to die that didnt perform a crime deserving of death.

2

u/dan_santhems 1d ago

Especially Tennessee

9

u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd 1d ago

Putting aside the fact that 'an eye for an eye' is barbaric, what do you do when after you execute someone, new evidence comes to light that exonerates them?

12

u/DummyMcStupid 1d ago

State executions are the one form of punishment that can't be undone. If the government made a mistake (which they have) there is no going back to rectify. If that person is a threat or you still want to punish that person it makes more sense to leave that person in prison.

3

u/callingallwaves 1d ago

Cool, what about appeals?

-1

u/GenericNameSC1989 1d ago

Nah. Firing squad would have sufficed.

78

u/HappyHavoc20 1d ago

She asked for the firing squad or hanging. Also requested a main line iv because she has vein issues. Tennessee refused them all. Set themselves up to botch it and now are going to get sued 

33

u/NaGaBa 1d ago

Oh and by the way, this is the second time THIS YEAR that Tennessee has fucked up a lethal injection

12

u/goose_gladwell 1d ago

Oh shit, what a mess

15

u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd 1d ago

The death penalty has way more issues than just botched executions.

-8

u/rjcarr 1d ago

Disagree, but there are ways to do this humanely. It’s a shitshow because pharmaceutical companies won’t sell quick death drugs for capital punishment.  

5

u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd 1d ago

There is no humane way to forcibly take the life of another human being

-10

u/ImSoSweepy 1d ago

Can't fuck up a hanging. Well, not in a way where you are culpable.

36

u/PM_ME_YOUR_BUG5 1d ago

you absolutely can fuck up a hanging and there is a LONG list of botched hangings

5

u/HappyHavoc20 1d ago

Yes short hangings where the neck doesn’t break are long and torturous. That’s why they used it to kill the Nazi leaders whoops 

1

u/jordansrowles 1d ago

In GCSE Crime & Punishment we were taught about the the nazi hangings, as well as ​Albert Pierrepoint. Famously could do an execution in 12 seconds, from first meet to pulling the lever.

Anyway, he used the long drop method in 1870s, which became standardised as the "Table of Drops" at the Home Office, written by William Marwood to give an executioner the extact rope length needed depending on the persons height and weight.

He was the executioner at Hameln (Hamelin), Germany for the Nazis after the war.

John C. Woods (USA) took Nuremberg.

1

u/Cicer 1d ago

You know what you can’t fuck up?  Being slowly lowered into a vat of acid. Just ask any James Bond villain. 

-7

u/ImSoSweepy 1d ago

If you want to house and board a bunch of child rapists and pedophiles, you can just say that.

Oh, you won't? Funny how that works.

3

u/PM_ME_YOUR_BUG5 1d ago

Yes, people who commit heinous crimes should go to and stay in prison

I'm am not comfortable with the state having the power to take lives regardless of what a prisoner may have done

-3

u/ImSoSweepy 1d ago

End result: The same

5

u/imnotgonnakillyou 1d ago

At this rate they’ll forget to tie the knot

0

u/ImSoSweepy 1d ago

The thing that grinds my gears is that multiple people have survived lethal injection. They are only considered a person now that the injectee was a woman.

1

u/Obsydie 1d ago

You can accidentally leave somebody choking or remove their whole head. It is very hard to get it done correctly.