Christa Pike, who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug last week during a botched execution in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking, her lawyers said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ms. Pike continues to receive critical medical care at a Nashville hospital, the lawyers said. The prognosis remains unclear, they said, but they expect a long recovery.
“Christa is a survivor and will take recovery one day at a time,” the lawyers said.
Ms. Pike, 50, is believed to be the first person to have survived doses of a lethal injection drug. She has been hospitalized since the execution attempt on Sept. 30, after it became clear to witnesses that she was still breathing after two doses of pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injection executions.
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Generally it’s more expensive to execute someone due to all the appeals and other processes you have to go through.
There is no one so cartoonishly evil that it’s unsafe to even keep them in prison.
Most of us have not seen true evil up close. Most of us cannot even imagine it. We just believe we can, absolutely certain in the arrogance of our own ignorance that we already know everything we would ever need to know about it.
But in reality, we look away from even the brief glimpses of evil we do see, choosing instead some variation on the just world theory to make it sit better. An example of this might be finding a way to blame a victim of bullying or abuse for some level of unwise personal choice that makes it mostly their own fault – in our own sight – and thus keeps us from having to deal directly with the wrongdoer in any way.
That’s just a very mild example, but it’s all around us. We humans don’t want to see evil. It’s a direct threat to our innate sense of security and stability – and why stochastic terrorism is on the to-do list of every budding autocrat. We “missing stair” evildoers ALL the goddamn time, in every culture, in every country, law enforcement and laymen alike. Most of us are not even equipped to look at evil, much less determine its true nature or potential for harm to others.
And that’s kind of where I clock this opinion: well meaning, hits the right virtue buttons, but basically uninformed in terms of personal experience.
I won’t go into what I have seen personally. I’ll just say I genuinely wish there were no such thing as “so cartoonishly evil that it’s unsafe to even keep them in prison.” You’re very privileged in so many ways just to be able to think that, and I hope you never understand just how lucky you are in that regard.
Billionaires tho…
But that’s fundamentally a flawed argument. It’s more expensive becuase death penalty cases have more rights. Specifically in the US what is called “actual innocence” is not grounds for an appeal to a life sentence but is for a death penalty.
Ideally we would extend that everyone, not save a few bucks and justify continued incarceration of innocent people by noting “hey it’s not a death sentence.”
Imagine the scenario of an innocent person who can’t appeal becuase the trail was fair but would have been freed if they had been sentenced to death, but becuase of the judge or jury’s mercy, they are imprisoned for life.
That has happened here.
Not think a great argument for abolishing the death penalty since it fundamentally is just saying “it is way too expensive to let any prisoners appeal based on being innocent. We could save so much money if didn’t let anyone do that.”
Are people sentenced to death entitled to a different amount of appeals than those sentences for life?
Yes. https://schwartzcohenlaw.com/how-many-appeals-allowed-on-death-row/
My gut feeling is that access to lawyers matters more than the number of procedural steps available.
Death row inmates seem to have much better ability to be represented by pro bono attorneys’ who will go to the mat on every single hail Mary motion.
There’s an exception to every rule: Richard Ramirez is pretty fucking cartoony. Those vatos that caught him should have ended his ass on the streets.
idk have you seen Dr Morocco in Transformers Rescue Bots?? /s