Celebrating torture makes you worthy of receiving it. Bloody animals, challenge yourself and be better humans.
Congratulations Tennessee, you made something worse than death. I hope you’re happy.
I think “worse than death” is their motto on the license plates in Tennessee.
A lot of pro torture ghouls in the comments.
They’re called Americans and it’s why the American penal system is about punishment rather than rehabilitation.
Oh and don’t forget the for profit motive of the American penal system too. How else will they maintain slavery and turn locking humans in cages into a profitable business.
Yup. Scandinavia actually rehabilitates their inmates and as a result has a very very low recidivism rate. Meanwhile in America, you go in for shoplifting and get turned into a hardened criminal who ends up murdering someone. #Freedumb
This whole shit is just wild. The state shouldn’t be murdering people. This chick brought home a chunk from the skull of the girl she killed. And now the state is fucking up so hard you can’t help but feel bad for her because we as empathetic people dont like suffering. Fucken rollercoaster.
She is being kept largely in solitary confinement, she said, “away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me”.
Such isolation was its own form of pain, she said, given that she spent the first 28 years on death row in solitary confinement.
She was 18 at the time of the murder. Most people are hardly the same person that they were that much of their life ago.
She was neglected by alcoholic parents,[12] and her attorneys said she was exposed to alcohol in the womb.[13] She was raped as a toddler and again at ages 11 and 17.[14][15] She attempted suicide at the age of 12 and in 1991 she was sent to a Juvenile Evaluation Center in Swannanoa, North Carolina
Yikes.
I never understood why the death penalty needed so much time to be administered. How does this shit not take a week to do? 28 years… torture and utter waste of money.
Those darn appeals and trying to make sure someone is ACTUALY guilty before murdering them!
There’s a solid argument that solitary confinement alone is torture. Twenty-eight years of it.
28 years of solitary confinement sounds needlessly cruel even for someone convicted of a terrible crime, however, it was arguably justified by her actions in prison. She tried to kill another inmate, for which she was convicted, and later, she tried to escape.
Trying to escape your captors is normal response.
It’s also a normal response for the authorities to try to keep the murderer in prison, even if that means harsher conditions.
I have issues with the prison system in the USA. I think far too many people are imprisoned, and the system fails to rehabilitate people it could and should. That said, I do not want Christa Pike to escape, or be released into society.
She beat a girl to death and kept a chunk of her skull as a trophy, then later tried to strangle another prisoner. She showed herself to be an extreme danger to others and should be confined for the rest of her life, or until there is clear and convincing evidence that she is no longer dangerous.
This is a perfectly fine argument in a world where she hasn’t been exposed to torture. Her constitutional rights were so egregiously violated she deserves her sentence to be commuted.
If you have a problem with that, blame the people who tortured her on behalf of the state, not her.
One of the goals of imprisonment is to punish. I’m willing to agree that she has been punished enough.
Another goal is to protect society from people who have demonstrated an ability and willingness to harm others. I’d be entirely fine with moving Pike to a more comfortable prison or mental institution.
“Deserve” doesn’t enter into the conversation when someone is an obviously violent and dangerous person with no remorse. Repeal the death penalty, sure… But release the prisoner? No.
Most people dont crack other’s skulls in and keep the pieces either
if you punish mental illness, then society itself is sick.
In the US. Can confirm society itself is very sick.
What do you do when mental illness apparently makes you premeditate a murder, carve religious symbols into someone’s flesh, and smash their head like an ape getting at a coconut? You can’t make that right. They grouped up, got all edgey with their satanism, and murdered someone. Your dark past does not give you an excuse to rob others’ futures no matter your mental condition.
No one said it should be an excuse. And a possible solution in her case might have been a forced therapy; so she would also be locked away, just not in prison but a mental institution. If that’s better or worse depends on the institution. But at least the goal would be to right her mind and not punish her if there is no meaningful corrective result.
I’m not of the opinion that all minds can be “corrected”. This case was an especially nasty one, involving multiple people all targeting one person and luring her out away from everyone and mutilated her. The stain of malice cannot be denied here. Seems like everyone has skin in the game for mental illness but no one gives a shit about the hatred and loss of life.
Locked up in a mental institution is also punishment. It’s not like this is a large chillout area with fun games.
No idea how it is in the US, but in Germany this is an even worse punishment, because they don’t get a normal sentence. If they get locked up in jail, there is a time attached depending on the severity of the crime. But mental institution is basically “until deemed fit for society”. So if the staff there wants to fuck you up (or if you are actually a lost cause), they will simply never deem you fit for release and you stay there until eternity, pumped with drugs. And all of this without another judge looking into the case ever again (unless you happen to have very very good support from outside, but even then the judge will typically ask experts — so the doctors — who will just explain why you have to stay locked up).
got all edgey with their satanism
it’s amazing when you can pinpoint Americans.
Factually what happened, but please enlighten me with your elevated world view.
There has never been a Satanic ritual related death in US history.
There have been some troubled people that wanted to scare the Christians that were abusing them. And given the number of false convictions around the early and mid 1990s because of ‘satanism,’ anyone that brings it up just looks stupid. Purely, ridiculously stupid.
There is no evidence it was premeditated, and she didn’t carve religious symbols into anyone. There was a 1 symbol carved into the person, and it wasn’t by her. That person admitted to doing so in court.
Please familiarize yourself with the case before commenting:
https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1998/pike.htmlYeah no I read that. I would no longer find her guilty of premeditated murder and as I stated before she did NOT as confirmed by the person who carved said pentagram in her chest stated to police, carve any religious symbols into someone. Not only do I think she served her sentence now I think the state is guilty of torture and you should be legally eligible to be held liable for slander. “Familiarize yourself with the case”. Hopefully other people’s opinions teach you that your opinion isn’t absolute.
you’re not an expert. just some random idiot.
Okay Mr expert then, what the fuck is up? What do we do?
Fix the society and the material conditions that allowed this to happen, and work to undo the harm that the failures of society caused that caused this to happen. This crime was completely preventable, and this person, given her personality this late in life after a lifetime of unimaginable and uninterrupted torture since the moment she was born, is obviously someone that would be a good person to have in society.
If you define any desire to kill as mental illness…
well good luck with your utopia of happy sociopaths pretending to be mentally ill and getting re-released to murder again.
She was also repeatedly raped as a child. Sometimes you need to understand what lead a person to their crimes. If you can’t see past the reality of the perpetrator, and only care about obsessing over the most brutal parts of the crime instead of Pike’s lifetime of suffering, then your opinion isn’t related to justice, just revenge.
Revenge was most likely the motive for her trying to kill (only failed due to lack of time) the other death row inmate.
Committing premeditated revenge murder for making rude comments and possibly other actions is not simply “OK” because you had a rough time in the past. Other victims don’t get to just murder everyone they don’t like because they had a bad time. Hell, most rapists were probably raped them selves, not an excuse, considering other victims aren’t out there doing it.
Again, having a horrid past does not excuse her actions. The murder still took place and the stated reasoning was jealousy.
Nothing excuses her crimes, but being tortured should absolutely excuse her conviction.
I’m sure her victim would feel great about that, or you know, nothing at all because she smashed her head in with a piece of asphalt.
We are not talking about most people though.
You literally said “most people change”. So yes, you indeed did bring most people into the conversation. Everyone here screams mental illness, but nobody wants to talk about the brutality of carving symbols into flesh and cracking bone with primitive tools.
I literally never talked to you before in my life.
What is there to talk about? Its brutal and fucked up. What else is there to say?
“Most people” does not matter when we talk about a person that is clearly not like most people. In their upbringing and in their actions.
The person I replied to did, I didnt see it wasnt you, but that means you didnt even read the whole thread just my comment and came in here with a shred of context. Good job.
Cry me a river.
Not to mention the conditions leading up to this could have been partially the fault of the state as well. Not saying people don’t have accountability for their own actions, but in the United States our mental health care is abysmal. So realistically, it’s a failure of the state coming and going. Yet all these groups are ready and willing to worship the state.
The story we have been told has a group of young adults going into the woods to smoke weed together. And then her murdering someone in a violent manner (stabbing over and over)… which very well could have been planned. Modern studies are starting to show that marijuana is tied to people having psychotic breaks in people with bipolar disorders. Which she was diagnosed as bipolar… So it could be completely unrelated… but this situation would be even more horrible if someday we find out she did infact have a psychotic break and none of it had been planned.
And now the state is fucking up so hard you can’t help but feel bad for her
I definitely don’t feel bad for her. What she just experienced wasn’t nearly as awful as what she made her victim experience. Oh, and she’s still alive, unlike her victim.
I feel bad that a Human is being tortured. Its not necessary and doesnt fix anything.
Would you say this about any criminal, regardless of the offense?
I’m not trying to argue anything. It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about lately and have debated with myself over the extent of this.
Its a complicated subject for me especially since I am just a nerd and not a law expert. Unfortunately for her the entire nation has been intimately inundated with her case, which is probably why I feel I can give my opinion. All said, I think I would, I would like to say I would. Torture is not anything that accomplishes something, its pure sadism.
What she and her cohorts did sickens me to the bone, as a many great things today do. But she still shouldn’t be tortured. It fixes nothing and warps the minds of its perpetrators. It is the hammer that turns all humans into nails, just not good.
I agree that it isn’t necessary and I think we should use methods far more instant and guaranteed for the death penalty. Still doesn’t make me feel bad for her though.
Dark future, indeed. The State should never have the right to murder anybody. The only person who should be able to decide if your life ends early is you.
Two added notes:
- That piece of skull is still in the custody of the state, and they refuse to return it to the victim’s family even through multiple lawsuits, so they aren’t even doing this for the victim’s family’s “closure” or whatever the line usually is in defense or the death penalty.
- Use of sexist language to describe women, even violent criminals, is still sexism.
What? The states is holding on to her skull fragment?
Is chick sexist now? What?
What was the sexist language?
It’s hard to have sympathy for Pike, given what she’s done. But at the same time, the state is torturing her at this point, which I’m pretty sure is in violation of her constitutional rights. If she is to be sentenced to death for her crimes, then just put a fucking bullet in her and end her misery already, which is what should have been done in the first place. The lethal injection has always been a cruel, wasteful, and performative procedure and should have been abolished ages ago. It exists not for the safety of the executed, but to protect the feelings of those who have to witness the execution. Fuck that; if you believe that you have the right to end somebody’s life as a punishment for their crimes, then you should have to witness the grim reality of the sentencing you give out. There is so much margin for error with the lethal injection process that an outcome like this was bound to happen eventually - in fact, this isn’t even the first time somebody’s survived a botched injection like this.
I don’t really know where I’m going with all this. This story just has me riled up in a variety of ways lately.
The answer is to abolish the death penalty, not to expedite the process with bullets. What the hell is wrong with you?
I’m with you, but that is a slow and arduous process that has been fought for years now. In the meantime, until we as a society can wean off of killing our prisoners, we can at least be humane in the way we go about it. The lethal injection is by no means humane.
This is America. The cruelty is the point. It would be easier to get people to go for drawing and quartering people at this point. I mean she requested to be hanged and shot I think.
Eh. I don’t really want to pay for people who torture others to death to hang around in a cage for a few more decades. Just needs to be done instantly and without room for error. And obviously only in completely open and shut cases where there is zero doubt the person committed the crime.
If cost is your concern, it’s cheaper to imprison someone than to pay for the courts and lawyers for the significantly longer legal process to execute someone, not to mention the execution itself.
That’s not an argument against the death penalty in concept though - it could just as easily be taken as an argument for cheaper executions.
Cost isn’t the real concern, vengeance is.
If cost is your concern, it’s cheaper to imprison someone than to pay for the courts
I’m aware. Which is why I also believe the process needs to be changed. If the person tortured someone to death and the evidence proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt, then the execution should be swift and sure. No appeals. No waiting years on death row. That’ll bring the cost down.
There’s no valid reason why a swift execution following a trial and verdict should cost more than feeding, clothing, and housing someone for decades.
That’s a real big if. I don’t trust states like Texas or Mississippi with that power.
George stinny was a black boy who was accused of murder of a white person in the 1800s (I think) somewhere in the Deep South. He had an all white jury, a useless fucking lawyer and pretty much had everything stacked against him. He was just 14 when he was executed. In the last few years, he was exhonorated.
Anyway, my point is I wouldn’t trust ANY state with making sure someone is ACTUALLY guilty. If there is even a slight chance of someone innocent being executed, it should be abolished. It should be anyway as no one, outside of very few exceptions, like self defence, has the right to take someone else’s life.
The 8th amendment has never once been applied correctly to any law.
if instead of trial and due process she was killed by a mob? would it have been more fair, just, and humane?
I’m not using that hypothetical to defend mob justice, but instead to show how much the justice system has to fuck up to be less humane than mob justice
In comments released by her legal team on Friday, the prisoner said that there had not been a moment since she was injected with a massive dose of the sedative pentobarbital that she had not been in pain. “My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul,” she said.
More in article.
This will be an unpopular opinion for sure, but I just don’t feel bad for her at all. Seriously… just- don’t fucking murder people! It’s a simple rule! Hundreds of millions of people manage this every fucking day of their lives with ease.
She lured someone into the woods carved a pentagram into her chest and smashed her skull in. NONE of this had to happen and it was her actions that were the catalyst for it all.
I wonder what her victim, whom she tortured, carved a pentagram into her chest, then crushed her skull thinks about all this.
Why don’t we just use a guillotine? Properly sharpened there’s pretty little room for error. Seems like we just do the gas thing to make it easier on the people that show up to watch.
In open and shut cases where it’s beyond doubt that the suspect committed a crime like this, I fully support the death penalty. No reason to keep them around, paying for them for decades.
I bet there was a hell of a lot of pain in the mind and soul of the poor girl she murdered too, so shrug.
And that justifies torture surely?
Nah. We just need to stop doing lethal injections and use a gun or a guillotine or however many other guaranteed instant death methods humans have come up with. Lethal injection is silly. It’s just for the people that show up to watch.
What value is there in keeping people who torture others to death in cages for decades before they die naturally while we foot the bill?
For one why should the state have the power over life and death especially when mistakes are made? For another you know the death penalty cases cost more due to challenges and stuff like that, so even though “cost” shouldn’t matter even if it did your case isn’t supported.
For one why should the state have the power over life and death especially when mistakes are made?
Then who decides? Seems like you’re saying the alternative is for the state to decide to keep them locked in a cage for decades before they wither and die while we pay for it.
Note that I said I only support it when the evidence undeniably proves they committed the crime.
For another you know the death penalty cases cost more due to challenges and stuff like that,
Then maybe we should change the process. Again, I said I only support it if the evidence is immutable. So why allow any delays in a situation like that? Should be quick and inexpensive beyond the initial trial.
Make it easier for the state to execute people with large amounts of wrongful convictions everywhere. The evidence is never “immutable”.
There are very good reasons to be against the death penalty and torture in the abstract, but that doesn’t mean we have to be sympathetic to this particular monster’s suffering.
Sentence served. Let her Go Home.
Yes, let’s let the unhinged person who carves pentagrams into people’s flesh before caving their skulls in go home.
OH NO!
Anyway,
So you’re perfectly cool with Trump’s America normalizing the torture of convicted criminals?
There are very good reasons to be against the death penalty and torture in the abstract, but that doesn’t mean we have to be sympathetic to this particular monster’s suffering.
