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.
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.”
If a state is not competent enough to contain a person in a metal box, they are definitely not competent enough to decide who lives and who dies. Especially when these people who are “too dangerous to contain” are often contained perfectly fine for decades prior to their murders.
A lifetime in solitary is worse than death, imo.
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.
Not everyone is going to be the same on that account, but I imagine Christians will speak up about choosing death rather than it being chosen for them.
It also matters what method of execution is offered.
What do you mean? Because suicide is a sin?
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.
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?
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
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