I know this is a fraught and controversial subject, with strong feelings on both sides of the issue, however, this is just… unbelievable and beyond barbaric:
Botched execution leaves Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike alive after legal saga
Failed Tennessee execution renews the debate over death penalty methods
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials haven’t explained yet what went wrong during the failed execution of Christa Pike, which was called off after she was given two doses of the drug meant to kill her.
It wasn’t clear if Pike was still alive on Thursday. She could be heard snoring loudly in the execution chamber Wednesday night more than an hour after the execution process began and nearly 30 minutes after a second dose of pentobarbital was administered.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for a gruesome 1995 murder, was taken by ambulance from the prison to a hospital, where she was being treated, her attorneys said.
May Martinez, whose daughter was murdered by Pike and her boyfriend and who traveled to Nashville to see the sentence carried out, told NBC News that “it was a mess.”
The failure, which one death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Gov. Bill Lee to postpone Tennessee’s lone remaining execution this year and to order a review “to determine exactly what occurred.” It also raises questions again about the state’s procedures and its use of single-drug lethal injections.
“There are very few answers this morning. It’s very early. There are a lot of questions,” Lee told reporters Thursday at an unrelated event, noting he had received no updates on Pike’s condition. “The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered.”
“This is a tragedy. There is no one who wanted what happened last night to happen,” the governor said. He added: “It’s deeply disturbing to me that this has happened in this state.”
Background: Christa Pike killed a coworker when she was 18 years old. It was a brutal murder. She confessed. And although she had suffered abuse as a child and had mental health issues, in my view, that obviously does not excuse her actions. She took an innocent person’s life.
The part I have never understood is how the State (and by “the State” I mean any governmental body - federal and/or state-level) can outlaw murder and taking another person’s life and then condone doing the exact same thing under the justification that it - the State - is the sole arbiter of who gets to live and who gets to die.
Of course, one reason is that the State has placed innocent people on death row, and even executed innocent people, and even one mistaken prosecution or execution is one too many.
It makes no sense to me.
Yes - there a bad and evil people in the world who do horrible things. I would have no problem locking them up forever or putting them all on a remote island and letting them survive under the Law of the Jungle. Lord of the Flies style.
The good news is that since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, nobody has been executed for any crime other than murder. But handing the State the power to kill people (and the State has killed people in the past, and not just for murder) seems to me to make us just that much less civilized.
FYI - the 6 conservative members of SCOTUS greenlighted the execution, while the 3 liberal members dissented. Does anyone think that this SCOTUS is not capable of reversing previous precedent and allowing non-capital crimes to allow for the death penalty?
Thomas Rhett, Tyler Hubbard, Russell Dickerson - Death Row
