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Tennessee: Execution of Christa Pike stayed!

Thermal said:
Yes. Saying she was only 18 is implying she was too young to be responsible for her actions. Replying with 'poor widdle girlie' is mocking that implication.
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As a general principle, I support sentences that are slightly less severe for young adults than other adults.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
As a general principle, I support sentences that are slightly less severe for young adults than other adults.
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Generally, that's probably a good idea. Generally, a young adult is still developing their brain and still dealing with raging hormones and the like.

Generally, they are not cold blooded torturers and murderers though. I don't think a summary pat on the head should be extended to the most vicious. It's not a passing phase that they'll grow out of.
 
Thermal said:
Yes. Saying she was only 18 is implying she was too young to be responsible for her actions. Replying with 'poor widdle girlie' is mocking that implication.
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I think the foetal alcohol syndrome and its effect on neurological development might be of more relevance.

NB I am not using it as an excuse, as FAS covers a range of potential developmental difficulties and I, obviously, have not seen any of the assessment documents, so I don't know what levels of impairment and the kinds of difficulties she may have had.

See also PTSD type effects from sexual abuse.

As I said, it's been a mess since the start.
 
Carrot Flower King said:
I think the foetal alcohol syndrome and its effect on neurological development might be of more relevance.

NB I am not using it as an excuse, as FAS covers a range of potential developmental difficulties and I, obviously, have not seen any of the assessment documents, so I don't know what levels of impairment and the kinds of difficulties she may have had.

See also PTSD type effects from sexual abuse.

As I said, it's been a mess since the start.
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Yeah, the casual chain that ends in how much personal responsibility they have is something I wrestle with. You can't entirely blame someone with a brutal start, but I don't know that it excuses them. Chicken and egg thing, sort of. Were they psychos who *also* had horrible stuff happen to them, but would have followed the same arc anyway? We have psychotic murderers who had no trauma at all, and we have trauma victims with FAS that are loving and docile.
 
Thermal said:
Yeah, the casual chain that ends in how much personal responsibility they have is something I wrestle with. You can't entirely blame someone with a brutal start, but I don't know that it excuses them. Chicken and egg thing, sort of. Were they psychos who *also* had horrible stuff happen to them, but would have followed the same arc anyway? We have psychotic murderers who had no trauma at all, and we have trauma victims with FAS that are loving and docile.
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The home environment in early years can make a marked difference. We raised from infancy our adopted daughter who was born with both FAS and narcotic addiction. She is now working as a continuing care assistant looking after people in their homes who are unable to adequately look after their own needs. She just loves her job and is as compassionate as any of her clients could possibly hope for. (Yes, we are rather proud of her :))
 
Carrot Flower King said:
I think the foetal alcohol syndrome and its effect on neurological development might be of more relevance.

NB I am not using it as an excuse, as FAS covers a range of potential developmental difficulties and I, obviously, have not seen any of the assessment documents, so I don't know what levels of impairment and the kinds of difficulties she may have had.

See also PTSD type effects from sexual abuse.

As I said, it's been a mess since the start.
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Thermal said:
Yeah, the casual chain that ends in how much personal responsibility they have is something I wrestle with. You can't entirely blame someone with a brutal start, but I don't know that it excuses them. Chicken and egg thing, sort of. Were they psychos who *also* had horrible stuff happen to them, but would have followed the same arc anyway? We have psychotic murderers who had no trauma at all, and we have trauma victims with FAS that are loving and docile.
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It's a conundrum. Do we decide that they exercised agency, and can therefore be held accountable for their capital crime? Or do we decide that they lacked agency, and can therefore not be held accountable for their capital crime?

But if they lack agency, are they even human, in any practical sense? We don't euthanize a rabid dog because we want to hold it accountable, after all.
 
theprestige said:
It's a conundrum. Do we decide that they exercised agency, and can therefore be held accountable for their capital crime? Or do we decide that they lacked agency, and can therefore not be held accountable for their capital crime?

But if they lack agency, are they even human, in any practical sense? We don't euthanize a rabid dog because we want to hold it accountable, after all.
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It's worse if we think they partially lacked agency, which is likely the most common. Yes, they could choose, but no, their choice wasn't entirely unencumbered. Because we are all in that boat to one degree or another. Free will rearing its ugly head.
 
Rolfe said:
This is how vets put down pet animals. It really is euthanasia. They just go to sleep and stop breathing. How can you mess it up to that extent?

I don't know what the shelf-life of pentobarbitone is, but surely they could get some fresh stock? Try a veterinary wholesaler. I suspect it's related to something I read once, that doctors won't assist in this barbarity, so they're relying on poorly trained lay staff who have virtually no experience to do the venepuncture. That will go wrong, every time. It's not a skill you can acquire by watching a demonstration.

The French had the right idea when they invented the guillotine. If you really must act like a completely barbarous country.
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I suspect it's a lack of USAian production; the EU (European Union Anti-Torture Regulation) heavily restricts the export of certain drugs (including pentobarbital) to countries like USAia that retain capital punishment.
 
Steve said:
(y)Our 12 yo springer went very peacefully and quietly, and quickly, in July. As did all our previous pets when their time came. Vets seem to know what they are doing.

And 3 tears ago my 88 year old mother had an equally peaceful departure with the assistance of MAID.

It's a good thing that many doctors won't participate in executions, but surely the USA has no shortage of doctors who agree with capital punishment.

And many years ago when my RN wife was first getting certified in starting IV's I let her practice on me til she got it right. She was good and got it rather quickly. Maybe those lay staff could find similar volunteers to practice on.

I have previously heard that supply of appropriate drugs to the penal industry is an issue. Maybe they are just winging it with whatever they can get their hands on.
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The AMA prohibits physicians from taking part in executions.
 
It's a funny thing. I am rationally and logically firmly in the camp of no capital punishment. But there is this primitive little guy in the back of my mind that, every once in a while when hearing of a particularly heinous crime, yells out "That person deserves to die!"
 
Thermal said:
I'm generally against the death penalty, but I'm not sure life in prison is really less barbaric. You are giving them a choice between a living hell, where they might glimpse a little happiness here and there before dying in the cage, or straight to dying in a cage. It's the old argument- is torture (putting a human in a cage for life) and watching them eventually die worse than killing?
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From my experience, most (not all) criminals who commit heinous crimes punishable by death have zero respect or concern for their own lives--which is why a good number of them are put on suicide watch in prison. So, yeah, not much of a deterrent. I am generally on the side of no death penalty, I think he only argument in its favor is that it could theoretically save a ton of resources, since the delay in appeals and procedures is a fault of the system, not an inherent problem with the death penalty.

As for this particular case, regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, the fact that she survived the state's attempt to execute her should be automatic and obvious grounds to suspend her sentence. There is no other sane way to proceed.
 
stanfr said:
As for this particular case, regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, the fact that she survived the state's attempt to execute her should be automatic and obvious grounds to suspend her sentence. There is no other sane way to proceed.
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Hmmm.. didn't this come up in another botched execution, a long time ago? The judge ruled that the sentence was 'death by electrocution, but the ruling didn't specify how many cracks the State got, so they just did it again?

Although yeah, seems like cruel and unusual kicks in there somewhere, and the State has struck out.

I haven't been following her condition- is she conscious or anything?
 
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Steve said:
It's a funny thing. I am rationally and logically firmly in the camp of no capital punishment. But there is this primitive little guy in the back of my mind that, every once in a while when hearing of a particularly heinous crime, yells out "That person deserves to die!"
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Sounds like me. John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, et al? Fry their asses and be done with it. But I resolve the contradiction by hoping that the government will represent the rational and logical more than the primitive side of me.

You can say that there's nothing irrational about wanting guys like Gacy and Bundy, for whom no reasonable argument for innocence can be made, to pay an earned and ultimate price, and I wouldn't disagree. But, after all, anyone who's been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in our legal system is in the same boat. And that includes people like Cam Willingham, where there is certainly rational reason to doubt his guilt (not to mention the many people who've been found by DNA evidence to be innocent of the crimes they were accused of before, fortunately, being executed). The system, as an adversarial system, can't be perfect enough to separate unfailingly those sheep from the actual goats. I'd rather the guilty, even if they are admittedly in the majority, get the benefit of a lesser penalty than to have the few innocent suffer the greater along with them.
 
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