Christa Pike was 18 when she killed a classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row. Now 50, she is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday in what would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed Slemmer. The case got widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body.
Pike does not deny her guilt, but her attorneys and supporters argue a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teen with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
Estos americanos me dan tanto miedo como los chinos y los rusos, son un masa amorfa de psicópatas
Y no crean que esroy defendiendo a esta loca, pero… pena de muerte? Muchachos, evolucionen un poco.
State sanctioned murder is the most obvious sign of a people who have mentally yet to leave the cave.
Death sentences as punishment is backwards and counter to the goal. Ending life is not a punishment, it is disposal. At best it is cathartic revenge for the victims and their loved ones. But true punishment would be a long term restriction of rights and reparations through service and financial donation. And really, rehabilitation should always be the primary (if not exclusive) goal of the justice system.
State sanctioned killing of a prisoner should only be performed for compassionate purposes or maaaaaybe in the exceptionally vanishingly rare case that someone is genuinely too dangerous to even keep in prison with others in which case it is more humane than permanent solitary or sedation into catatonia. And, in either case, it should be heavily regulated and only allowable if medical and mental health professionals sign off of on it.
And I bet they wouldn’t return their shopping carts either.
USA is a country of extreme violence, the death penalty is a disgrace and USA is not a worthy democracy for having it.
“is not a democracy” is all - not even European countries are, when you consider capitalist lobbyism. But Magastan is not even trying to pretend it is anymore.
There are levels of quality of democracies, Scandinavian countries score high, and yes they are democracies, but no democracy is perfect, although a handful of countries are close.
But USA is the most flawed (worst) democracy of the western developed world, with a 2 party system and FPP voting, and extreme powers to a single person which in itself is obviously undemocratic despite the president is somewhat democratically elected.
Power should never be centralized like that, it’s like USA is electing a dictator for 4 years.
“these so called democracies aren’t actually democracies because they serve capitalist interests”
“AAACTUALLY, they are democracies, they say so”
You have a very naive view. The moment that - regardless of who gets elected - capital and lobbyism has a larger influence on policies made by those elected, than the program with which they campaigned, it is no longer a democracy. Same of course if elections are already heavily influenced by capital and lobbyism pushing favorable candidates.
In such systems, a change of power by vote is still possible but it would require an overwhelming support for a new political movement to break the status quo (most recent example possibly being Hungary).
That does not mean however that the system is a democracy anymore, neither before nor after such a change. After such a change, however, there’s always a potential to try and return to a democracy.
Due to globalisation, megacorporations are currently able to leverage policies in basically every country, if only by pressure from countries they have currently under their spell. Accordingly, I am not aware of a single actual democracy in today’s world.
Pike does not deny her guilt, but her attorneys and supporters argue a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teen with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
Jesus fuck
A mentally unwell teenager, who’s life was full of sexual abuse and neglect up to that point, in a fit of jealous rage…
I think she deserves more empathy than lindsey clancey. Where are the protests for this woman? the mothers carting their babies to the courthouse with signs? Where are the donations?
Is it just me or are Americans uniquely bloodthirsty and their justice system is focused on revenge more than in civilized countries? I don’t really notice many stories from Europe where victims demand more punishment decades after a crime happened. I’m sure many individuals want criminals that hurt them be punished as harshly as possible but I don’t see the media focusing on in that much. It’s like in Europe it’s understood that the punishment has to, above all, serve the society, not satisfy the victim.
I remember watching a doc about re-sentencing of minors sentenced to life in prison after some Supreme Court decision. They were showing a kid who got life in prison at 16 for armed robbery. When his sentence was re-evaluated he was 30+, got educated in prison and was clearly resocialized and ready to be a productive citizen. The victim (the cashier that was threatened with a gun) showed up at the trial and said that he should stay in prison because she would not feel safe with him walking freely. Not only don’t I understand how someone can be so vindictive but also why a justice system would pay so much attention to the desires of an individual who’s the worst possible person to give an opinion about the case. The guy’s life sentence was turned into 50 years so he was set to get out of prison at 66… Such a fucked up country.
Americans aren’t adults, they are more concerned with “punishing bad guys” than they are actual justice
And then people wonder why Americans don’t revolt. Clearly they know nothing of our “justice” system. One misstep or perceived misstep sends people to prison or death row for decades
Their justice system is pretty archaic in a eye for an eye way. Interestingly criminology (the study of crimes including the effects of punishment) is most prominent in the USA yet has the least impact in their own country.
However the spiral is the same everywhere. A brutal crime is commited, as an easy answer (because solving underlying issues is unpopular and won’t garner votes) the sentences are made stricter. That however never helps
It’s not just you.
The death penalty is barbaric. Even in cases like this where the person admits (or does not deny) guilt, the primary reason we should not have a death penalty is to spare the innocent. The only way to be certain that we never execute an innocent person is to never execute anyone at all. People actually guilty of their crimes like Christa Pike can spend the rest of their lives in prison.
That’s because death penalty is not about justice, is about revenge.
It can also be about “this person is too dangerous to contain.”
Honestly, and this is definitely a hot take, it feels more evil to indefinitely imprison someone than to simply execute them. I hope policing false positives become less of a thing in my lifetime, because both options blow
You can release the wrongfully imprisoned, you cannot un-execute someone. So its more humane to allow them to live, even if its incarcerated. I do agree that prison systems need to be reformed entirely and focus more on rehabilitation than punishment, but Ill take the easy answer to ‘how do you prevent wrongful executions’ first.
I feel like we should let the for-life prisoner decide which they want
“Do you want to die or live the next 50 years in a cell?” I don’t think a lot of people would be choosing to stay alive under those circumstances.
I think you underestimate people’s love of living, even under bad circumstances.
America has a President responsible for raping children, murdering their bastard babies, then proceeding to murder hundreds more children and other innocents in his campaign of egotistical terror.
There absolutely is fucking room for a death penalty. Beyond reasonable doubt. Fuck off with the puritan crap.
Also kinda funny to see the Puritans mentioned in this way when the Puritans are well known for witch hunts and public executions of those supposed witches lmao, quite literally wrongful executions exemplified
Abolishing the death penalty is not about punishing the truly guilty, its about sparing the innocent. How many wrongful executions would you accept just so truly guilty people can also be executed?
What movie [music] is this from?
Primetime, about the To Catch a Predator show [music] from the 00s. I don’t think it’s out yet
My view on the death penalty is that some crimes ultimately deserve it. However, I believe that the state should never have the right to execute its own citizens. The government should not be trusted with the power to set laws and execute people. They can change the laws and make whatever crime they want subject to the death penalty.
So morally I find the death penalty okay in some cases, but practically I find it unusable
Anyone who entrusts the state with the power to execute those it already has in captivity and isolated from the public are morons
I’d personally also rather not execute the ones that are out in the general population, but you can choose your own hill I guess.
thats crazy she been locked up longer than i been alive dam
That’s an incredibly tragic story from all angles.
It is incomprehensible to imagine living for 30 years in prison. There has to be a better solution than this.
There are two solutions: either we put her into prison for her life or execute her
She’s a public danger
You don’t know that for certain, you can’t.
She’s been in prison for longer than she hasn’t, and it has been established that her early life was full of sexual abuse, neglect, and untreated mental issues. This happened when she was 18, she’s now been in prison for thirty years.
Do you seriously think people are completely incapable of change over decades?
This isn’t justice.
More of a danger to people than people who haven’t killed anyone. I’m not talking in absolutes, just every time countries have released violent criminals, those people went on to do More crime statistically than the average person. That means not everyone can be rehabilitated.
Mental disease and history of abuse only makes it more likely this person commits more crimes, not less. People without history of those things commit fewer crimes
She taunted, beat, and slashed her victim repeatedly for half an hour, carved a pentagram into her chest while still alive, then bashed her skull in with a hunk of asphalt. Then carried around pieces of her skull to school, showing people.
There are plenty of times where a person does something so heinous that they should never be allowed into society again. This is one of those times. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but life in prison is absolutely the right move here.
Also, yes, you absolutely can know that she is still a danger to society. She attempted to murder another inmate while in prison and has attempted escape.
Where is she going to get that mental health help? Who’s going to pay for it with the nazis taking everything? Who is getting paid enough to intetract with her knowing what she did?
This is complicated and at the end of the day, why not ask her and see what she says? Maybe she doesn’t want to be here.
I don’t think letting people into society who have proved themselves a danger once, and who cannot demonstrate that they have changed, is justice. The principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is about deciding whether to punish people; it’s not a principle that you can reasonably apply every single day once that punishment is first carried out.
The place to determine whether someone can be released into the public is a parole hearing. That parole hearing can take into account the fact that the person in question has already been proved to be criminally dangerous. This is part of the punishment for violent crimes: once you’ve been proven dangerous, the presumption that you’re safe is gone. Having proven that you’re dangerous, it’s at least somewhat incumbent on you to prove that you have reformed and are safe.
It’s worth being clear about why there’s a difference. Basically, most people are mostly good, and not violent. If that were not the case, “innocent until proven guilty” would not make sense - it’s only because we understand from experience that we can afford the presumption of innocence that this isn’t a disaster. But after someone is convicted, that heuristic changes: many more people (I won’t say “most” because I don’t know it for a fact) who have been convicted of a violent crime are violent, as an aspect of their character. So blindly applying the same principle doesn’t make sense - it will be wrong, and result in people suffering harm, far more often.
The result is a small number of people remaining locked up who were safe to release. Just as we accept that initial convictions will occasionally be wrong and result in locking people up who never should have been though, that’s the price you pay for generally trying to keep people safe.
“A murder should only have one victim. When Ratchett kills Daisy Armstrong, a dozen lives are broken, deformed, ended, THEY DEMAND JUSTICE! Of all these wounded souls, we must finally answer — who among them is a killer? Who takes up the knife? The answer is… no single one of you could have done it. Nor any pair. It could have only be done… by all of you."*
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With fascists, cruelty is always the point
ooh can it be marsha bla- oh.
Bit late now eh?
Time doesn’t bring back the victim
Neither does executing someone.
Yeah, no shit
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