Time for America to scrap the death penalty?

Tina Brown (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Christiane Amanpour (0:05)

I've actually been to Huntsville, Texas, death row. I was doing a documentary, and I was shocked by the clinical coldness of it, the willingness and the effort to try to tell people the most important thing, that it was painless. And clearly we know that this isn't true.

Tina Brown (0:21)

The idea of a humane execution is in itself a complete misnomer. There is no such thing as a humane act of state killing. It's a brutal act.

Christiane Amanpour (0:30)

The American death penalty system doesn't have all the drugs that it used to have because of the public revulsion, in great part now, to the death penalty.

Tina Brown (0:41)

A lot of these medics who work in prisons are certainly not, you know, really very qualified people. They don't know how to do it, it seems.

Christiane Amanpour (0:48)

Just that juxtaposition of going from trying to kill her on behalf of the state to trying to save her life. I mean, it's just crazy. This is something that can't continue.

Tina Brown (0:58)

It's a grotesque sort of moral cocktail.

Christiane Amanpour (1:05)

Hello, everyone. It's me, Christiane Amanpour, in London with The Ex Files, our latest episode. And joining me today as co-host, special guest co-host, is none other than Tina Brown, the ex editor of Vanity Fair and the current substacker of Fresh Hell. So we are always thrilled to have you. You're in New York. We're going to ask a couple of US based questions. So what about this botched execution of Christa Pike?

She's still hanging in there. She's unconscious. She's in hospital. But what does it say about the cruelty afoot in America's legal system, whether it's Trump or not, because this isn't just a Trump thing.

And is this a moment that might move the dial to abolish the death penalty? I don't know. And then we're going to take on the midterms and talk about Trump. And will these midterms be, as we've said, a referendum on him and his policies? And how does he stand to do, or rather his party since he's not on the ballot? So Tina, let's just start with Christa Pike. You're over there in the United States. Is it as big a story there as it is over here in the rest of the democratic world?

Tina Brown (2:16)

You know, I think a lot of people have been gutted by the horror, the sort of grand guineal horror of this particular botched execution of Christa Pike.

However, we're used to waking up many times in the year and seeing in quite small stories about how another person has been executed in the US. I mean, Biden had a moratorium on executions in 21, but as soon as Trump came back, he restored them and he also restored the use of pentobarbital, the drug that Christa was killed with, or not killed with as it was. We've had more, of course, since Trump took over. But the fact is that the American people have become completely inured, it seemed, to just the fact of execution, which always shocks me whenever I read it. I can't believe how small the stories are when yet another prisoner is executed. However, in this case, the mess of it, I think, certainly has outraged people about the method of the execution. But of course, the irony is, I mean, it's a kind of contradiction in terms. The idea of a humane execution is in itself a complete misnomer. There is no such thing as a humane act of state killing, in fact. I mean, it's a brutal act. And this is all about, frankly, cosmetic wording over something that is, I think, and a lot of people feel is absolutely barbaric at this point.

Christiane Amanpour (3:38)

I mean, I have to say, when I said the democratic world, certainly the western club of evolved democracies, the US is still the only one now that does it. Here in the UK, the last one was by hanging, and it was in 1964 That was the last execution.

You know, the US is along with, I don't know, China and Iran and North Korea and all those horrendous dictatorships that think nothing of executing political prisoners, criminals and the like. I think we just need to say, because there was a victim here 31 years ago, and her name was Colleen, and Christa Pike and her boyfriend, I believe, and I think maybe another person, essentially took this girl into their confidence to go off and do something in the woods, and they tortured her. They slammed her head. They broke her skull. They carved with a knife a geometric figure in her chest, and they killed her. It was absolutely violent and vile, and one mustn't forget her. Her name was Colleen.