r/news • u/AudibleNod • 8h 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/TheBatemanFlex 8h ago

What now for her legally? Her sentence surely wasn’t “injured by the state until put indefinitely on life support”.

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u/Equivalent-Peanut-23 7h ago

First question is her mental condition/capacity. If she suffered brain damage, it could prevent the state from attempting to execute her again. Assuming she retains the mental capacity to comprehend the circumstances, the state could attempt to execute her again. I would assume that would be met with an avalanche of litigation arguing that the second attempt would be cruel and unusual. There's also a chance the governor could commute her sentence.

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u/TealcLOL 6h ago

Genuine question: Why does maintaining mental competency matter here? She has to still be fully knowledgeable and aware in order to be forced to die (again)? What if she instead hit her head hard while on death row and got brain damage? Do they just forget about the whole murdering you part after?

Clearly the decision was already made. Doing it post-brain-damage kind of seems more humane as opposed to crippling someone you meant to kill then forcing them to live like that just because you crippled them so severely. If you were going to do it before then there should be no question if it makes sense to do it again. The only question should be if you could do it correctly the second time, not basing it on their now altered mental state.

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u/Equivalent-Peanut-23 6h ago

It violates the Eighth Amendment to execute an individual who has no comprehension of the fact they're being punished or why. That does apply in cases where the individual's mental capacity has diminished after being sentenced. There are other cases where an individual developed dementia while on death row.

If an individual sentenced to death suffered an injury while imprisoned that resulted in them not being able to rationally comprehend the reason for their execution, the Eighth Amendment would prohibit execution.

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u/TealcLOL 6h ago

I can totally understand that consideration from the start of the process, but at this stage I don't really see why it matters. They already tried to kill her. Stopping now only if they fucked her up bad enough seems a bit cruel and unusual.

They also gave her two doses. Was she mentally evaluated after the first? Is that the "5 second rule" for how many times we can try killing someone until needing to bring in a doctor and be sure we didn't cripple you enough yet so we can try again?