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Tennessee: Execution of Christa Pike stayed!

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?
Yeah, supposedly the botched rate is something like 3%. Not sure how they would ensure 100% effectiveness short of throwing you in a vat of acid so you dissolve instantly...which just highlights one of the fundamental problems with the penalty.
Last I checked Pike was still unconscious and in critical condition--which again highlights how insane the whole concept is, since here they are going out of the way to keep her alive just so they can presumably attempt to kill her again. If that ain't cruel and unusual, I don't know what is lol.
 
Still like to get the horrifically guilty out of the gene pool, though.

Darat used to have a Solzhenitsyn quote on his sig.

"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts."

That line isn't necessarily straight. It's a bit like terrorists - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
 
Darat used to have a Solzhenitsyn quote on his sig.

"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts."

That line isn't necessarily straight. It's a bit like terrorists - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Ya and the ones that carve pentagrams on other girls that they think are looking at their boyfriends before smashing their skulls with a rock are preeeeeeeety much on everyone's evil side.
 
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?
As of about an hour ago, she is still alive, but that might change.

The article reports her condition as of Thursday night, but it is dated today (I posted the date and time) so apparently this has not changed.


Fri, October 2, 2026 at 5:51 PM EDT

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator on Thursday night, after authorities failed to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyers say in court filings.

Pike, 50, was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital on Wednesday but remained alive. She was then sent to hospital in an ambulance.

Pike remained critically ill and was being treated at a Nashville-area hospital.
 
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As of about an hour ago, she is still alive, but that might change.

The article reports her condition as of Thursday night, but it is dated today (I posted the date and time) so apparently this has not changed.

"Pike, 50, was injected with two lethal doses of pentobarbital but remained alive. " Seems somewhat contradictory.
 
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.
We euthanise a rabid dog so that it doesn't suffer and die in pain and torment. Not the same thing.

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!"
It's one thing to have an inner voice. It's quite another to act on it. But your experience is not universal. I have never thought, on any level, that any human being deserves to die.
 
So as I understand it, Pike is now alive but unconscious after a botched execution (as seems so often to happen). So now they are trying to make her better so that they can...what, execute her again? Forget whether you think some people so horrible they don't deserve to live. The question of whether this is appropriate is another issue, even though it's likely we all feel that way sometimes. Why the hell do you have to go through that process? If you believe that she should die, why not just finish the job now? What kind of warped mentality is it that demands not only that a condemned person be aware of their execution, but must be in some measurable way conscious just at the moment when clinical death is said to occur? If you're going to snuff someone, just tell them. Even if you subscribe to the idea that it has to be "punishment" and not just elimination, if you tell them truthfully "now I'm going to kill you," the job is done even if the end of their conscious life is not exactly synchronous with the last heartbeat. The moment you lose your consciousness for the last time in your life is the moment of your effective death even if your heart thumps a few times more.

I'm against capital punishment anyway, because among other things I think that no matter how small the percentage of mistakes, it is always too many. And considering how many erroneous convictions have occurred, and how many years, even decades, it's taken for some to be corrected, and how often that correction is posthumous, execution is always going to be an obscenely dirty solution to a problem that could be solved otherwise. But to pile this kind of pseudo-moralistic stupidity on top of it just makes it even uglier.
 
I'm envious...you must be in a charmed life free of evil people. Either that or be a Vulcan.
Not really. It's just I'm more of a human rights absolutist. Even evil people have the right to life. Also, I don't think I have it in me to hate anyone that much. But then again, I've never had anyone close to me brutally murdered. I might change if that ever happens, who knows?

This pretty much closes the book on amateur judicial executions performed by local petty tyrants. From now on if a judge wants someone killed they should have to hire a professional hit man like the rest of us.
They should be required to do it themselves. But again, I'm pretty sure there would be volunteers.
 
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!"
You're hardly alone. Cruelty is contagious. A cruel villain makes us feel cruel, and his villainy stirs a rotten zest
for ruthless defiance of decency in

every
goddamned
one of
us.

You have to stay in shape to oppose the DP. A good exercise is to reflect on how much simpler life becomes
where executions are outlawed. (They are in Michigan; have been since 1847 -- except for treason. Dunno how treason against Michigan is supposed to happen. The statute has never been tested.) Whatever a court may
sentence some officially determined scummy bastard to, it wont be death. If the determination is revised, the
sentence can be annulled. Even some sort of restitution is possible.
 

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