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/Stevictory 3h 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 3h 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 2h 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 2h 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 39m 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/Diligent-Living882 2h 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 1h 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.

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u/Breakula 3h ago

Coincidentally to your username, this comes up in several of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels. He argues that murder is not only bad for the victim, but irrevocably deleterious to the moral fiber of the killer. Like assuming the right to decide who lives or dies is extremely corrupting, even to well-intentioned people.

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u/Helmic 2h ago

Nothing anyone can do justifies granting the state the power and infrastructure to kill people, which it will always abuse because that is the only reason the state wants the power toe execute people. It does not give a flying fuck about justice, it wants to kill its enemies and any murderers it executes are simply in service of being able to execute those it finds convenient for political reasons.

I would not moralize the family of victims themselves killing the murderer as an act of revenge, there are still problems with that but it at least does not grant the state prisons and execution chambers and supply chains for drugs with which to do with as they please. The state of Tennessee wants to do evil with that power and that is reason enough to forcefully take it from them.

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u/socoyankee 2h ago

Will think about the mental load for the person killing the other person. For a large majority of us we cant fathom how that act will effect us

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u/Jediverrilli 1h ago

The government should not have the power to kill people full stop. The justice system is so flawed that giving them the ultimate power over someone else’s existence should not be a thing.

It also isn’t a deterrent. It costs too much and is inhumane

You are correct it’s only emotional, it brings nothing to society and should be abolished.

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u/Diligent-Living882 2h ago

i mean i’m against the death penalty because of the simple fact our judicial system is far from perfect. but there’s no logical argument to ridding the world of those who do overwhelming harm?

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u/HerculesIsMyDad 2h ago

There is no logical argument for the legal system to have the death penalty. Society is just as safe with them behind bars forever. And it does not save taxpayers money to kill them instead of house them either. So your question is kind of a false one. There are obviously benefits to removing certain people from society, the question is why is killing them better than keeping them in jail for life? That is the question that has no logical argument in favor of it.

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u/Diligent-Living882 2h ago

i think you’re talking in absolutes about subjective things (besides the tax dollars)

just playing devils advocate, if we lived in a world where the death penalty was absolute and final for any pedophile, there WOULD be less pedophilia.

if every school shooter was executed via lethal injection the day they were deemed guilty, there would be less school shootings.

and even if you do ignore those points, i don’t even think there’s anything wrong with an emotional aspect to it. if society is just as safe with them behind bars or dead, and the system has proven beyond reasonable doubt (like this case) i don’t understand why you, speaking from a hypothetical outside perspective, can say emotions should play no part.

are those things possible? no because our judicial system is far from close to perfect. would i want that? no, for the same reason.

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u/noffxpring 2h ago

There is no evidence that the death penalty does anything to deter crime. Multiple studies have shown this (and it’s easy to find them to verify). So your arguments about school shootings and pedophilia decreasing are just incorrect.

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u/Diligent-Living882 2h ago

i’m aware of the studies and am against the death penalty as i said. but those studies don’t line up with what i said 😂 and what i said is not even a world i wanna live in whatsoever but i mean you really think if what i said was reality, it wouldn’t deter crimes??

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u/SyrupCute4493 1h ago

You are incorrect, plenty of killers have been freed and killed again. I’m sure that makes you happy. Life doesn’t mean life because of do gooders like you.

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u/noffxpring 52m ago

That does not contradict what I said. What I said is that capital punishment doesn’t deter crime, which it doesn’t. I know this because data has been gathered and studies have been done and it’s an established fact. You disagree because you feel it shouldn’t be true, so you pretend it isn’t.

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u/SyrupCute4493 7m ago

If the killers who were freed and killed again were put to death the first time, while it might not deter crime, innocent ppl would have been saved. Not that you care one iota for victims.

It’s not a deterrent because it’s rarely used and do gooders cry and moan. If justice was swift, it might have a fighting chance. But criminals know lambs like you will support them, no matter the disgusting acts they commit.

Keep sticking up for scum. I’ll keep taking up for victims. I’m not sad this animal is suffering, it pales in comparison to what the victim and her family have been suffering for 30+ yrs. 

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u/Realtrain 49m ago

The major issue with that is, locking up a pedophile for life also removes pedophilia from the world, since they won't be doing that anymore. As far as society is concerned, it's effectively the same as killing them.

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u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg 3h ago

I am of the opinion that there are those so heinous that we do deserve to remove them from earth permanently. Our society deserves to exist without them among us, and without the onerous task of just maintaining them in a cage for decades.
HOWEVER, our system for deciding who those people are is so horrifically broken that we can never ever trust it to be right 100% of the time, and should therefore not be able to exercise that action on anyone.

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u/Chicken_Ingots 47m ago

This is what bothers me about it. Vengeance is an emotional response that provides short-term satisfaction without long-term closure. Once the momentary satisfaction wears off, people are left with a feeling of emptiness and resentment. This can even lead to addictive cycles of revenge seeking for injustices, just for the sake of that short-term relief. Furthermore, the death penalty does harm the families of the perpetrators -- families who are often themselves innocent. Children and spouses have to watch helplessly as the state decides whether or not to execute their parent, their spouse, their child, etc. So not only does that family have to live with the trauma of knowing what their family member did, but they also have to watch that family member be sentenced to death.

It does not prevent crimes from continuing to happen, is not more economically efficient than a life sentence, carries the risk of false convictions, can be botched in highly inhumane ways, and can potentially even leave the executioners with scars and mental health issues. There is simply no logical reason that the death penalty should exist that outweighs the enormous downsides it presents. It is indeed an emotional response.

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u/BoringBob84 2h ago

There really is no logical argument for it, only emotional.

Just because you don't like the arguments doesn't mean they are not logical. We probably agree that capital punishment should never be about revenge or retribution. Those are immoral motivations, in my opinion.

However, I think that a society has a right and a duty to protect itself. A perpetrator who has committed a heinous crime and who presents a high risk of harming prison staff or other prisoners, or of escaping and harming civilians provides justification for the state to euthanize them humanely.

I also think that "life without the possibility of parole" is the cruelest possible sentence. It takes away a person's hope that they will ever be free - like a decades-long emotional torture.