Christa Pike's Botched Execution

Kennedy (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Kennedy Saves the World. Christa Pike is up and walking, and her attorney says she is angry. Now, a lot of things happening in this case. This is not dissimilar to the Cornell rape case, because everyone wants to dig in on one side and be completely right and have it be black and white. And it is not that simple. This is one of those cases that requires nuance. So you can be like me and say, hey, maybe the state shouldn't be putting people to death. And then you look at Christa Pike's botched execution, where they tried two rounds of penta-barbatol that didn't work and she didn't die. She was just snoring. And you go, oh, maybe there is a level of incompetence and ineffectiveness that is implicit in the state, being the entity that it is. And maybe that's one of the main reasons why the state should not be putting people to death. So, yes, in wrestling with the death penalty, I have talked about this. I am very much on the side that this is not what we should be doing as a society. If Patrick Clancy can offer forgiveness to his ex-wife who murdered their three children, if Erica Kirk can offer forgiveness to the man who murdered her husband, then maybe we can be the kind of society that doesn't necessarily forgive people, because I am not that big of a person. I do not forgive Christa Pike for killing Colleen Slemmer. I think it was an act of evil, and I think that level of evil, if it exhibits itself and makes it that easy for someone to murder another innocent person, I don't think that goes away. I think that level of evil is unrehabilitable and it doesn't matter what the sentence is, or how long she's in prison, or if you have the looming threat of execution, nothing is going to make her better.

And I don't know that this case requires forgiveness. I don't know that I'm a big enough person to offer it, so I don't. I would be lying.

But I don't think it makes us a better society to say, here is someone who is truly evil, let's kill her. And to satisfy a bloodlust and this desire for mob justice. I also think that it is a bad societal impulse. And you see a lot of that going on in Cornell with some of the protests. And there is no acknowledgement that we all need to have and take personal responsibility in our lives in every facet. Sometimes you can't control the horrible circumstances of your life. And there are other times where you do make choices that put you in a position to have even worse things happen to you with greater probability.

In Christa Pike's case, we know too much about her. She has been made a saint and a folk hero in the same way that Luigi Mangione and Lindsay Clancy have. And that is wrong.

Idealizing murderers, that is a bad impulse as a society. So now we will only know Christa Pike's name because of the evil person that she is. So I think that it is this evil, double-born streak inside of her that not only allowed her to live through the botched double execution attempt, but also, you know, and her lawyer, I don't trust her lawyer. I don't trust lawyers to begin with. But her lawyer coming out and saying, oh, you know, she's in critical condition. She's going to be brain dead. And it's like, yeah, the whole thing really does veer into cruel and unusual punishment. And we shouldn't have a form of execution that might not work, that might just put people in pain. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who love that she is in pain and wish her a slow and painful death, which, you know, runs counter to the Constitution.

I didn't believe him when he was like, oh, you know, it's like, there might have to be amputations. No, she's up and walking. And he's like, oh, she's angry. Oh, now she's angry. She's angry. I wonder how Mae Martinez feels, who is Colleen Slemmer's mom. Colleen Slemmer, the victim who was murdered brutally, satanically when she was 19 years old. And, you know, her mom didn't get another 30 years with her daughter, the way Christa Pike's family has. And my first thought when I heard her attorney go on and on and on about, you know, oh, she's she's up and walking and she's confused, a little mentally foggy. You know, she's shackled to the bed. So awful. It's like, yeah, it's awful. It's also the consequence of murdering someone.