Resuscitating Christa
The main focus of this blogposting is to address the paradox entailed in the apparently successful attempts to resuscitate Christa Pike after the attempt to execute her by lethal injection failed.
The primary purpose here is not to argue, pro or con, regarding the propriety of the death penalty; most people have their own views of it and there are no expectations that reading this will change anyone’s views. The reader has the right to know the author’s personal attitudes towards capital punishment, so these will be disclosed. Next, a discussion of the roles and functions of the prosecution and defense in arriving at the imposition of the death penalty. Following that will be an overview of Christa Pike’s situation (as it stands at the time this blogpost is being uploaded). This discourse will conclude that there is no disconnect between initiating the execution of Christa Pike and the subsequent efforts by hospital personnel, following the execution’s failure, to resuscitate her.
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I believe that the death penalty is a valuable tool that ought be administered sparingly, and limited to the most exceptionally depraved cases. The horrific and incontrovertible details of the murder for which Ms. Pike stands convicted are well known by now, and will not be set forth in detail here; it suffices to say that capital punishment is a warranted consequence. Incarcerating her did not prevent her from attempting to murder a fellow inmate (never mind that the fellow inmate was serving a life sentence for murder), so something more drastic is now warranted.
[Similarly, the case of Nidal Hasan in my opinion would warrant the death penalty even by civilian law standards; that his crime, trial, and conviction occurred in the context of the military makes it all the more deserving of capital punishment because he killed the soldiers whose health was his unit’s mission to promote (more on this aspect to follow below). I hasten to note that the scheduled execution is now reportedly under consideration for live public telecast. This is controversial. But Hasan had a political agenda in committing the Fort Hood massacre, and America is now fighting an asymmetrical war that is as political as it is military, so I can see a rational basis for livestreaming the execution. If I were calling all of the shots (pun intentional) I would have at least one Jewish woman in the firing squad. As a practical matter, I likely will be engaged in my gainful employment at the time of his scheduled execution, and so will have better things to do than watch the proceedings live. I certainly have no plans to attend anyone’s watch party.].
As for the accomplice liability laws, in March 2026, Alabama governor Kay Ivey, a death penalty proponent, commuted the death sentence imposed upon Charles ‘Sonny’ Burton to life without parole because the actual triggerman’s death sentence had also been so reduced. This was, in my opinion, quite appropriate.
It is also noteworthy that to a murder victim’s family, a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole usually gives nearly as much basis to move forward as an actual death penalty execution. Where the perpetuator has the possibility of being granted parole, however, the victim’s family must go through the anxiety of awaiting a parole board decision. As I have seen with some personal friends, if that decision is to grant parole it causes much trauma to the family, while a parole denial only starts another period of anxiety pending the next parole board hearing and decision.
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On many social media postings, Christa Pike’s defense attorneys are being ridiculed if not denounced for the arguments they proffer in their representation of her. It must be remembered that a criminal defense attorney has the obligation to zealously advance the cause of the client. For a client such as Christa Pike, the atrocity of the murder committed poses a challenge to the defense attorney.
While I myself would not take on such a case, neither do I fault the defense attorneys here. Because prosecutors are government bureaucrats working in government bureaucracies, and every government bureaucracy (including the ones in which I myself have been employed) is susceptible to deviating from its mission if there is no corrective fail-safe mechanism. For the prosecutors’ offices, the criminal defense attorneys are such a mechanism. While the accused (or, in the case of Christa Pike, the convicted) are technically the clients, the American criminal defense attorney is effectively defending the United States Constitution.
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There is plenty of blame to go around for the botched execution of Christa Pike. The relevant Tennessee officials were informed in advance that Christa Pike has a vascular condition that presents a high risk of complications in a lethal injection execution. There already had been a recent failed execution on a convict having similar medical issues. No central line was inserted to ensure that the pentobarbital would enter the bloodstream in the appropriate quantities. Tennessee refused the requests made on Christa’s behalf that her death sentence be administered through hanging instead of lethal injection.
The only thing done correctly here is that Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has put a hold on executions in that state and ordered an investigation.
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Executing convicted criminals is a legal process and not a medical process. Execution procedure is in many respects the antithesis of medical procedure. The objective of the execution procedure is to terminate the life of the convict. The objective of medical care is to preserve the life of the patient (or at least remedy the patient’s maladies), and the medical profession rejects physicians who do not share such values.
As someone who believes that Christa Pike’s execution is long overdue, I am dismayed that the hospital to which she was transferred following the unsuccessful execution attempt gave her sufficient medical care for her to be released. But I would be infinitely more upset if the hospital staff had not done so!
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