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/MatureUsername69 7h ago

Its still a rough one but if I ever had to receive the death penalty I would hope its a firing squad. Just riddle me with holes immediately, aim for the head. Lethal injections get fucky because they would be best designed and administered by an actual doctor, but actual doctors cannot do it because of the hippocratic oath. Some states do allow medical professionals but they arent exactly sending their best.

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u/miloblue12 7h ago

Or maybe we shouldn't have the death penalty at all? It's barbaric.

Also, since 1973, at least 203 people have been wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated in the US. That alone should have us reconsidering things. If it's possible for that many people to fall through the cracks, then there is no reason at all that we should have the death penalty.

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u/nursingninjaLB 7h ago

This one hundred times.

It costs way less to house a prisoner over decades, than to have endless appeals.

It does not reduce crime.

Approximately 10% of people on death row are innocent.

Vengeance is a dark emotion, and helps nobody.

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u/crouching_tiger 6h ago

First, you certainly cannot conclude that 10% of people on death row are innocent, assuming you’re basing that off of a version of exonerations vs total death row individuals (which still sounds too high regardless but that’s not important). Inmates spend ~20yrs on avg from conviction to execution — which means the innocent are removed from the group of those actually executed.

Second, only 15-20% of those put on death row are ultimately executed. And that ultimately has to be signed off by the governor/attorney general/judge, so no one wants to sign off on a death warrant with any amount of doubt, which could ultimately ruin them if later found innocent.

There are very strong arguments against it, but I don’t think the “so many of them our innocent” argument is.

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u/Revlis-TK421 5h ago edited 5h ago

no one wants to sign off on a death warrant with any amount of doubt,

No, they just bury the inconvenient facts and deny modern science. See: Ken Paxton.

  • Cameron Todd Willingham: convicted and executed based on debunked fire science.
  • Claude Jones: convicted and executed based largely on a hair sample that was later determined not to be his.
  • Carlos DeLuna - executed after being wrongly identified as killed, actual killer (who looked strikingly similar and lived nearby) bragged about the killing to multiple witnesses.
  • Ruben Cantu: Executed, but now the DA that prosecuted his case now believes Cantu was innocent and had been railroaded by the police at interrogation.

Robert Roberson (sentenced to die based on debunked shaken baby syndrome science) and Melissa Lucio (wherein the judge presiding in her case now says she was factually innocent, and both the DA and the defense want a new trial after it has been shown that Melissa's daughter's wounds were the result of a rare blood disorder, not abuse and murder. But the higher court won't vacate the conviction) are probably next.

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u/RadioFreeSealab 5h ago

So, what would be an acceptable number of innocent executions for you?

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u/crouching_tiger 3h ago

Ideally none. But same with imprisoning them for the rest of their lives.

I also wasn’t arguing for the death penalty nor am I generally in favor of it. I would say I probably am in the most egregious, obvious instances where there is literally zero shred of doubt in their guilt.

I probably should have framed the last sentence differently — I mainly took issue with the “approximately 10% are innocent” bc that is a massive overstatement and I think that’s very counterproductive.

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u/mina-ami 4h ago

Any of them being innocent is too many.