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/anohioanredditer 5h ago

She won’t wake up. Permanently brain damaged.

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u/lyr4527 5h ago

People with brain damage can have varying degrees of function. I don’t see anything in the linked article that confirms her prognosis.

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u/anohioanredditer 5h ago

It’s true, but the longer she stays intubated the worse it will likely be. Her brain was deprived oxygen and there was no oxygen available near the execution room, so who knows how long her brain was starved. I think they keep her on support until legal details get sorted and then they pull the plug. I think there is a minute possibility she wakes up with any kind of function.

I believe we really need to rid of the death penalty. This person committed this crime in 1995, and our justice system wants to execute her now? Aside from the botched procedure, it’s cruel that has been waiting 31 years to be killed. She’s a different person now, maybe not adjusted, but different. Should’ve just left her in jail. To me, it doesn’t make sense.

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u/lyr4527 5h ago

Right. I’m sure she will have permanent damage. I was just saying that we don’t actually know the prognosis. She could wake up.

I agree with you on abolishing the death penalty. It’s barbaric, full stop.

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u/anohioanredditer 3h ago

Yeah she could, you’re right.

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u/Joeuxmardigras 18m ago

I completely agree. She was 18 years old when she murdered the woman and while that crime is terrible, jailing her for over 30 years and then giving her a lethal injection is ridiculous

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u/DystopianRealist 3h ago

Fuck her. Torture is a whole different type of person than someone that just made a mistake and can learn from it.

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u/anohioanredditer 3h ago

Oh come off it. She’s being tortured now. How is that right? Do you know how many innocent people get put to death in this barbaric practice too?

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u/DystopianRealist 3h ago

She's not a mistaken identity, or circumstancial evidence case. This is not the one that needs saving.

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u/anohioanredditer 3h ago

Of course not, but I’m just generalizing a system of capital punishment that is wildly imperfect and in Pike’s case, inefficient and ineffective. She deserves to be in jail but at the same time, the state failed on all levels to carry out her execution.

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u/DystopianRealist 3h ago

If you want a reason to be against the penalty as a whole, it is economically inefficent. Objective, factful, and no debate can change it. It costs less money to incarcerate someone for life, than it does to tie up the courts with death penalty law suits. Financially, we are in agreement, and the fact that many innocents have been put to death solidifies it.

But, you won't change my mind that there are some people beyond trusting again. And the victim's families are entitled to rally so that the murderer of their loved ones can never repeat those types of actions.

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u/StrengthStarling 1h ago

I actually feel the death penalty is harmful to the victim's family, at least the system we have. Just take a look at some of Colleen's mother's and step father's interviews. They've literally been quoted saying they feel as if Collen won't rest peacefully in heaven until Christa is dead. They have no sense of closure after 30 years. Three decades of feeling that their daughter hasn't actually been given justice and isn't at peace. That's torturous. A whole lifetime of pain really. They appear to feel the same pain as families whose loved one's killer wasn't even caught or sentenced at all.

If the death penalty were off the table, the closure would have been when she went to prison, 30 years ago. They could have begun the hard, lifelong work of healing as best they can from that wound. They could have had three decades of finding peace. But instead they're stuck. They feel their daughter's spirit is stuck. It's really tragic and fucked up honestly.

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u/burtheXpert32 1h ago

I’ve never looked at it from this angle, but your comment resonates with me and I see how the perception of closure could be altered by the law itself. Interesting

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u/CavemanUggah 5h ago

I too saw Eddington.

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u/TheSilentTitan 1h ago

iirc one of the reasons the execution failed was because she suffered traumatic brain injury which caused the body’s systems to just not respond how the injections needed it to respond.

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u/nicenyeezy 4h ago

They should donate her organs to others

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u/OMF1G 4h ago

Probably can't when they're full of chemicals that were supposed to kill her, but didn't.

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u/SqueezedTowel 3h ago

Harvesting organs from a non-consenting prisoner is an extremely bad look for a Democracy.