Nice. I’ve written a lot about that already politically weaponized mess already, though, so I want to get back to Christa before she becomes the next Cindy Sheehan, an earlier Left-exploited woman who is now a trivia question. (Do you remember the reason for her 15 minutes of progressive hero status?)
In today’s New York Times, an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician who was a consultant for Pike’s defense attorneys before Pike’s failed execution writes an accusing op-ed headlined, “I Know Christa Pike’s Medical History. What Tennessee Did Is Unforgivable.” (All NYT links now get past the paywall. I think the Times is having a subscription downturn. We can hope…). My immediate reaction to that title was “No, what Christa Pike did was unforgivable: at the age of 18, she tortured and killed this teenager who had done nothing to Pike at all:
[Notice of correction: I had previously written that she was 20 when she murdered the girl. Pike was 20 when she was sentenced, but she was 18 at the time of the crime]
It is important to note that this is not a disinterested analyst: he’s been paid by Pike’s lawyers, and they have an agenda that he is advancing with his essay. He slyly transitions to a “Poor Christa!” angle: she was in pain, the drug used on her is poison (uh, yeah, that’s the idea), execution by lethal injection is brutality dressed up as a medical procedure, executions are not supposed to be cruel, we don’t know how much pain the murderers suffer, yadayada. He writes,
“The Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution does not guarantee a painless execution, a decision states such as Tennessee cite to defend their lethal injection protocols. Very well. Then states should stop telling the public that lethal injection is clinical and not cruel. The illusion does not fool death row prisoners. I was a medical expert in three separate execution cases in Tennessee over the past 10 years. In each instance, the prisoner elected to die by the electric chair instead of by lethal injection.”
Note: That’s a woman, Ruth Snyder, being executed at the top in the first photo of an electric chair execution ever published.
Why should a murderer have any choice at all? Why should a state have to sell the public on a method of execution? Hold the execution in complete secrecy, and let the method of death be a surprise, but an effective surprise, like a blow to the head from a sledge hammer. States capitulated to death by lethal objection because the legal and rhetorical challenges to capital punishment have relied on appeals to emotion (the wrong emotion) for centuries, the opposition will never stop, and it has cost and will continue to cost taxpayers millions of dollars that could be more responsibly spent on, well, anything.
By complete coincidence, I was reading last night the transcript of Clarence Darrow’s 1924 debate about capital punishment against Judge Alfred J. Talley. Darrow was, of course, opposing the death penalty; he had just managed to save thrill killers Leopold and Loeb from execution with a justly-famous appeal to the judge in the case. I posted about that closing argument here and here. It is brilliant; Darrow’s performance in the debate is not (neither is the simplistic argument of the judge). There is a reason the debate didn’t make it into my book with historian Ed Larson, “The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow.”
Darrow obviously improvised in his debates. He regarded them as easy money and recreation, not preparing or organizing his thoughts as he did in his courtroom oratory. The result in this instance was rambling, lazy incoherence.
As always, Darrow argued that only the poor are executed because rich killers can afford lawyers like him. (The fact that everyone who should be isn’t executed is not a justification for never executing anybody. This is the same flawed argument wielded by those who claim capital punishment is racist. The solution is to execute more whites, not to spare black killers.) He flirts with the correlation-causation fallacy, pointing out that the states with the most executions also have the most murders. He descends into slippery slope territory: if capitol punishment is such an effective deterrent (as the judge fatuously argues), why not use it to prevent everything society doesn’t want? His audience also heard the hoary false equivalence that it is hypocritical for a state that makes murder a crime to murder convicted murderers.
Ugh. It was depressing to read. I emphatically disagree with America’s greatest trial lawyer on capital punishment, but I do find his argument in Leopold and Loeb’s trial the best argument against it anyone has made. Darrow extolled mercy, compassion and love as societal values the government should encourage by extending them even to the worst human beings among us with the goal of making society more civilized. I believe that is typical progressive utopianism, nice but fantastic. By not executing the worst of the worst who take human lives, our culture devalues human life. I might not have voted to execute Christa Pike (she doesn’t make my very high standards for “the worst of the worst”), but no one should feel sorry for her.
I notice there isn’t much mention of the Satanism aspect of this crime. I saw a documentary on this and that was the one thing the Job Corps classmates really described was the Satanism. I would definitely have voted for the death penalty. The hour of torture before murdering her would be the deciding point for me.
Now, using drugs to kill someone is a problem because it is complicated and people have widely differing tolerances to poisons. From person to person, a lethal dose may vary by more than 10 fold. Rare individuals could be incredibly tolerant to poisons (Ozzy Osbourne).
There are effective euthanasia methods such as the one below.
https://horsesandpeople.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Fig2-captive-bolt-conscious-1024×535.jpg
Nitrogen asphyxiation is also fairly simple and foolproof. If it isn’t working, just add more nitrogen. If you wanted something fancier, you could always use Argon, which has the benefit of being denser than air, so all the air gets pushed out the top.
Firing squad is also incredibly effective. Half a dozen hunting rifle rounds aimed at a person’s heart and fired at the same time is not going to be survivable. Neat? No.
That is what this is all about though, right? Making the death look neat and civilized is the point. We would just give them a paralytic that will stop their breathing and they will suffocate. Not kind, but it would look calm and peaceful from the outside. There are some reports that Canada has done this for MAID when the other drugs weren’t available. It isn’t like the ‘subject’ is going to file a report and tell what happened. We are going to all this trouble for show and it is resulting in these botched executions.
Always felt firing squad was the most elegant method. It mirrors a jury of peers to carry out the act, and the tradition to load one rifle with a blank gives plausible relief to any executioner equipped with a conscience.
I’d only add an interlock to prevent any rifle from firing until all triggers have pressure on them.
It evokes military dictatorships and political executions.
Sadam was ridiculed for using dynamite for executions. Ironically, it is probably the most humane method in existence.
The blank gimmick does nothing for the person firing. The recoil difference on a blank leaves no doubt to who fired the blank.
Argon, being a noble monotonic gas, has the same molecular weight as the atom; 18. It is less dense than Oxygen (32) and Nitrogen (28). But the weight difference is not enough to undergo any separation under normal temperatures. Krypton is barely denser at 36. The most common dense gas is SF6, but Xenon is also common as a dense gas.
In addition to displacing Oxygen, Xenon is slightly narcotic.
Argon has a mass of 40 g/mol, while O2 has a mass of 32 g/mol and nitrogen 28 g/mol. You are confusing atomic number and mass. Argon is often used preferentially in place of nitrogen in air-sentitive preps because the oxygen displacing property makes it easier to exclude oxygen.
Small correction: I believe Pike was 18 when she committed the crime.
-Jut
Right. She was sentenced when she was 20. The murder was two years earlier. Fixed.
My understanding of the facts is that the botched execution with Christa Pike left her in a coma with irreversible brain damage. If that is true, then I do not expect there to be a subsequent attempt to complete the execution.
My understanding is that U.S. law requires a death row inmate to be mentally and physically competent at the time of execution. A person in a coma has no brain function or consciousness to comprehend the punishment or the state’s actions.
SCOTUS has ruled in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) that states cannot execute prisoners who are insane or mentally incompetent, as that would violate the provisions of the Eight Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment.
That would mean that Christa Pike will have to be left alive until she dies of natural causes,
If true, I doubt the Christa Pike estate will pick up the tab for those bills.
You are correct, the tax payer will have to foot the bill.
The use of a ventilator makes no sense though. If anyone deserves a DNR….
Descriptions of Christa Pike do not mention teaching other inmates to read, becoming a devout Christian while imprisoned, or building toys for tots in the prison workshop. They do mention a conviction for attempted murder of another inmate and an attempted escape. A menace to society? It seems so. She was sentenced to death by the jury who heard relevant evidence against her. The sentence should be carried out. There has been so much in the news recently about fentanyl deaths, and even small amounts appear to be quite lethal. Why not use it?
The same doctor who botched Christa Pike’s execution also botched another execution earlier this year. What is going on here? There might be an ethical angle to the botching of multiple executions such as incompetence.
It is being reported that this doctor had only rarely put a central line in patients and hadn’t done so in a dozen years. He had trouble finding a vein. Many doctors don’t give injections very often, their nurses tend to do that.
They really need to get physicians out of the execution business.