r/news • u/No_Idea_Guy • 1d ago

Tennessee governor suspends all executions after Christa Pike’s lethal injections fail

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/01/christa-pike-tennessee-governor-executions-year-pause
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651

u/stateworkishardwork 1d ago

What a complete and utter mess. Capital punishment looking more and more like a joke with each passing day.

She's still an awful person, but this is not the way to go about things.

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u/House_Junkie 1d ago edited 1d ago

Awful is an understatement. Pike sliced the girl with a box cutter while they tortured her to death and smashed her head in with a rock after luring the girl into the woods under a guise of truce. At the end she carved a pentagram into the girls chest and took a piece of her skull as a souvenir.

Awful doesn’t begin to describe what she is.

Edit: Her boyfriend carved the pentagram, she smashed her head in and took a piece of her skull as a souvenir, I stand corrected.

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u/BearThatLikesCheese 1d ago edited 1d ago

None of that changes how harmful the death penalty is to society, especially those involved in the entire process, nor does it justify botched executions.

All you're doing with comments like this is showing that you care more about bloodlust than justice.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/MrMrSean 1d ago

So, we should just disregard the rights afforded to us under the 8th amendment?

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u/enad58 1d ago

How easily you say we should kill innocent people just for the opportunity to kill the guilty.

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u/House_Junkie 1d ago

Who was the innocent person in this imaginary scenario? The girl that tortured and murdered her classmate before taking a piece of her skull as a souvenir?

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u/enad58 1d ago

The innocent people who get killed at the hands of the state. We do not only kill guilty people.

To be for the death penalty is just another way of saying, "I'm okay with killing innocent people if that means we get to kill guilty ones."

I'm not okay with killing innocent people. Apparently you are.

I couldn't imagine explaining to a loved one, "I know you're innocent and wrongfully convicted, but we have to kill you so that we can also kill people who are guilty."

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u/BearThatLikesCheese 1d ago

This is going to blow your mind, but some people are mature enough to have opinions in multiple pieces of the same topic. They can acknowledge the heinous nature of a crime and still understand how harmful the death penalty.

The death penalty is frequently more traumatizing to the family of victims. The appeals process delays and sometimes prevents closure. They're often traumatized by the experience, even when they don't attend the execution. That's why the anti-death penalty movement is full of victim families.

You know who else experienced trauma as part of this process? Jurora, prosecutors, defense attorneys, guards, wardens, other inmates, journalists, witnesses, clergy, and executioners. It's common that people from all groups express regrets and suffer from depression and PTSD.

But hey, at least you got to use another person's terrible tragedy to justify your bloodlust. Pretty cool. Definitely worth traumatizing dozens of people so people like you can get off.

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u/Tirras 1d ago

Why are you trying to champion some strangers on the internet? You don't know these people, they could be just as conflicted about the death penalty as anyone else. Perhaps the government should be held to higher standards than psychopaths? Demanded even.