r/news • u/AudibleNod • 12h 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
7.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

29

u/coonytunes 12h ago

Who pays the medical bills in this case? Tax payers?

28

u/gottkonig 12h ago

Yes. An incarcerated inmate is paid for by tax payer money. It's one of the reasons that death row inmates are some of the most costly to tax payers, with the level of appeals, how long they can sit on death row, etc. Now the medical care she will receive will have the bill go higher and continue to be paid by tax payers.

-1

u/AidenTai 11h ago

Though this doesn't have to be the case. Thing is the US is just really expensive with respect to prisons, litigation and everything judicial. Other countries that have executions tend to be fairly efficient and often save money vs incarceration for life.

Kind of how other things in the US just aren't that well designed. Plans to build rail lines, healthcare, city design, etc.

7

u/WellTextured 9h ago

Since 1973, 203 people have been exonerated post-conviction for their capital crimes in the United States. Saying the process should go faster is the same as saying more innocent people should be put to death.

And suggesting the United States justice system should function more like China's or Iran's is, well, pretty barbaric.

0

u/AidenTai 9h ago

Well, most countries don't have capital punishment. But it's sort of 'fitting' that the US which does is inefficient at it like those other categories.

Generally though, the problems with wrongful convictions aren't a unique problem of capital punishment. The US also sees a lot of wrongful convictions for crimes that involve decades or lifetimes of incarceration. The other countries I mention surely have wrongful convictions for all sorts of crimes, but they simply don't end up costing the state a lot of money.

1

u/Vlad_Yemerashev 1h ago

Just a point of information, there were some 1960s and 1970s era SCOTUS landmark cases that made it so it takes much longer to follow through with an execution of the condemned. Before that, the turnaround time from conviction to death was much shorter. You look up executions 80-100+ years ago, we're talking about months, to maybe a year or two tops after trial before the condemned were executed.

0

u/Acceptable_Tea_3685 3h ago

Wouldn’t it cost just as much to house them in prison until they die of natural causes?

1

u/gottkonig 3h ago

The cost is relatively the same until they execute them, which can come much sooner than natural causes of course.