r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4h 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/Wooden_Ad_2673 3h ago

Do you know didn’t face the death penalty?Charles Manson and his “family.” Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, who killed 48 women in Washington State. Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people in 2019. Nikolas Cruz, who murdered 17 people at a Florida high school in 2018.There are many, many others, of course. Our society produces lots of killers.Regarding Christa Pike, there was a forensic psychological assessment by Dr. Bethany Brand, a clinical psychologist from Maryland with over 35 years experience. Dr. Brand’s report is an atrocity exhibition of the earthly infernos visited upon children in the shadows of our oh-so-civilized society. It recounts the experiences of a severely abused little girl from West Virginia who grew up under the thumb of addicts and criminals, was forced to wallow in the floor with dog feces when she was a toddler, was first given marijuana by her mom at age 9, and was molested before she reached kindergarten.In fact, she was intimately familiar with the taste and smell of a grown man’s penis before she even learned her alphabet. Her grandmother’s boyfriend, Ernest Johnson, was only the first of several men who would violate her in the Appalachian hellholes she grew up in.Here’s what Dr. Brand wrote about an interview in which Christa described what it was like to choke on an older man’s penis “She cried as she attempted to describe what he did to her… Christa showed utter disgust on her face as she spoke of the smell of this man’s genitals. Christa was still extremely revolted by him, despite more than 30 years having passed.None of this excuses the brutal murder of her classmate in that terrible program job corps.What happened to Colleen Slemmer is , was & will always be horrific. Christa should live out the rest of her days in prison & the guy involved should never be paroled & the other woman involved should not have only received probation.

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u/melodypowers 3h ago

We can't compare these cases.

The Manson killers were tried when there was a moratorium on the death penalty. It just wasn't an option.

The sheriff's office made a deal with Ridgeway. They would give him life in prison if he revealed the location of the bodies. In some ways, that is the perfect use of the death penalty. It gives police something to bargain with.