I do think at times different arguments are being confused here. Many here (I am one) are of the opinion that there should be no death penalty, for various reasons, and the debacle of Pike's botched execution is an added one. That's separate from discussion of her character, or the question of mitigation.
Here one might consider the issue of how much responsibility is apportioned to society in general, and how much to the individual, and we can get bogged down forever is issues of free will and whatnot, and the extent to which this kind of event is considered to be a society cleaning up its shortcomings by executing its mistakes. There's a lot of room for disagreement here, no doubt.
I'm quite willing to consider the likelihood that Pike is a terrible person, and that whatever excuses might be made for this, her character is irremediably warped. Whether you decide to call such a person insane, or just plain evil, or something else, the question of what to do with them will always be with us, as will be the question of what, if anything, can be done for their victims.
But I'd suggest that execution is clumsy, barbaric, often arbitrary and too often mistaken, but even if you were to accept those faults, the pseudo-moral dance we go through to reconcile it with what we think we believe makes it fatally unreliable.
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