US moves from trying to execute Christa Pike to keeping her alive: what should we do next?

Christy Strawser (0:00)

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When news breaks, the story doesn't stop there. I'm Christy Strawser, let's get started. So, the state of Tennessee tried and failed to execute Christa Pike, the woman convicted of killing a romantic rival 30 years ago. Now, she's on a ventilator and may never recover, according to her lawyer. And he wants her sentence commuted. Here's Adam and Jordana in Minneapolis.

SPEAKER_2 (0:34)

We have the lovely Lindsey Brown joining us in studio. What should we do with Christa Pike? Tennessee tried to murder her, or excuse me, tried to kill her for the crime of murder. She murdered somebody else.

It didn't work. She's laying unconscious in a hospital bed. The only woman on Tennessee's death row, sentenced to death for a horrific murder that she committed and was convicted of back in 1995, now remains unconscious on a ventilator in critical condition today. The state, Tennessee, that is, made two failed attempts to execute her last week. It was through lethal injection, and I guess it wasn't lethal enough. They, you know, the team, I don't know if they screwed it up, if the drugs weren't powerful enough. I don't know, I don't know what happened.

But she is unconscious, on a ventilator. After two attempts, they sent her body to a hospital. Her attorney reported Sunday that doctors don't even know if she will survive or suffer permanent brain damage.

But Tennessee was going to execute her anyway.

Why are they keeping her alive in a hospital now? Is it just to execute her publicly again?

What should we do? This is, by the way, friends, don't confuse this. This is less about the death penalty. Tennessee has it. She was the only woman on Tennessee's death row, and they had tried to carry it out last week, and it didn't work. This is not unprecedented. There have been other times where it didn't necessarily work, but this is the only time where they gave up and then sent her to the hospital, and now she's there on life-saving equipment. Her sentence is death, but somehow she is really the only person that has evaded death now after two attempts from the state. What do we do with her? I say we have to finish the sentence, and if that means taking her off life support, that is what the state condemned her to, that is what the law of the land was, and I don't know if that is extraordinarily cruel. I mean, if she's on life support, she also has to have some kind of a feeding tube, because that's what they do on life support. We all know that you can't live that long without food or water for a few days. People at their end of life, often this happens, they choose to not have food, they choose to not drink. I know that is a choice, but she doesn't have a choice, because she is a convicted criminal and she was sentenced to death. So what are we doing keeping her alive? 651-461-9226. I say, and I know it's cruel, it sounds cruel because it is cruel. It is. But what else were we going to do? Bring her back to life and nurse her back to health just to kill her again? Isn't that crueler? Isn't that worse? That after whatever she's gone through, and we don't know because she was paralyzed, that's how they do, they paralyze you and then they inject the lethal dose of propofol or whatever it is to kill you.

Isn't that worse? Why don't we just finish the job right now? I'm not a big fan of capital punishment. I think in some cases, it's probably necessary for the greater good of humanity, but it would be a real hard thing if we were executing multiple people in states. And we're not. We're not. There aren't a ton of executions. And I know this is what the family of the murder victim wanted, and clearly it's what the state of Tennessee decided on. So I'm not going to retry the case here on the show. But what a situation this is. They tried to kill her twice. It didn't work, and now they're saving her? That seems odd. Someone texted in, pull all life support. Okay. Jor, turn off the ventilators, let nature take its course, and let the poor thing just die. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's almost worse what we're doing to this person than letting the execution actually finish the job.

Jor, take her off the ventilator. The intent was for her to die. There is no reason we should be wasting money on keeping her alive. Okay. It almost looks like a little bit of karma making Christa Pike suffer from the girl that she killed. Okay. But we're not in charge of karma. Hey, Jor, pull all life support. Yep. Jordana, Christa Pike, from what I read, has a blood clotting disorder and really bad veins. They knew this ahead of time and probably should have not tried lethal injection. That's why they tried two times back. Okay.