By Bob Gaydos

Christa Pike, alive on a respirator.

    You had one job. Kill the 50-year-old woman who has been waiting in her private cell at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for 30 years for the day to arrive.

    You botched it.

     Then you botched it again. You could not kill a defenseless woman, lying on a gurney preparing to meet her maker, even “happy,” and wondering why her arm was burning. And now she was snoring.

      Not dead.

      Americans have been debating the pros and cons of capital punishment for, well, ever. Recently, the debate had calmed down to a matter of, if you’re going to do it, at least make it humane. Gas or a firing squad are options used in  a few states, but using an injection of a lethal drug has become the widely accepted, humane, way of killing killers. Until Tennessee botched the job.

      There was nothing humane about the way the execution of Christa Pike was carried out. “Cruel and unusual” reentered the debate. Medical workers first had difficulty drawing blood from her. Then they had trouble starting an IV line, making seven or eight attempts to find a place to administer the lethal dose of pentobarbital.

     When the first attempt failed, the curtains for the viewing audience were closed while the medical team presumably regrouped. Then the curtains were opened again to a similar result. The curtains were closed and the medical team apparently transferred to a life-saving operation rather than an execution.

    As this is written, Christa Pike remains alive on a respirator and the governor of Tennessee has suspended all executions for the rest of the year while an independent investigation is conducted to try to figure out what happened. Good decision.

     Tennessee’s prison boss has resigned and Pike’s lawyers have asked that her death sentence be commuted and changed to life, such as it is.

    Pike, who did not deny her role in the slaying, received the death sentence for the brutal murder of a 19-year-old classmate whom she saw as a rival for her boyfriend’s affection. A box-cutter and concrete block were used in the killing. The boyfriend, who also took part in the murder, actually carved a pentagon into the victim’s body. Since he was 17 at the time, he could not be sentenced as an adult under Tennessee law. He received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Since Pike was 18, just a year older than her boyfriend, she got the death sentence. Her lawyers had argued at sentencing that she had bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and had been severely sexually abused.

      She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, but she was not even the first person this year Tennessee had trouble killing. In another case, although they tried multiple times at various places on the body, officials couldn’t find a suitable vein for the injection, so the execution was also postponed. That has happened in other states. However, Pike is the first person in the country to actually receive an injection of the lethal drugs and remain alive, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

     Much of the argument against capital punishment has focused on the fact that people of color or people with limited financial means are more likely to receive the death penalty. Still true. 

      On the other side, it is often argued that the state shouldn’t have to pay to keep a convicted killer alive for the rest of his or her life. Christa Pike has received free room and board courtesy of the state of Tennessee for 30 years while officials waited to kill her. Hardly swift justice.

      Tennessee has another job: Review its entire capital punishment system, from “Do we want it?” to “How do we do it?” Given this red flag, other states might consider doing the same thing.               

       How those questions are answered says more about us than about the killers. 

                               ***

Note: Shortly after this column was posted, Pike’s lawyers said she was conscious and speaking.

By Bob Gaydos

Firing squads? Really? As in line them up and guess who has the real bullet? Blindfolds? A last cigarette? A special viewing section for special guests?

Lost in news of the war (are we still at war?) and the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting, Trump reinstated the use of firing squads as a means of capital punishment in federal crimes. Because of course he did.

The Justice Department, which is currently seeking the death penalty for 44 defendants, is in a mood to speed up executions. It said the melodramatic method would apply to undocumented immigrants who commit murder and those who murder law-enforcement officers.

The Justice Department also recommended reviving the electric chair and the gas chamber as approved methods of execution, but apparently stopped short of calling for the guillotine. Too French perhaps.

And just to cover all bases, the Justice Department reinstated the use of pentobarbital for lethal injections, a protocol that had been halted by the Biden administration due to concerns expressed by human rights groups over pain and suffering. Not Trump’s concerns.

The Biden administration had paused federal executions because of the unavailability of other, less-cruel if you will, lethal injection drugs. Some drug companies had become reluctant to provide alternative drugs because of the complaints about pentobarbital.

Let me pause here to be clear. One measure of a society, in my opinion, is the manner in which it treats the worst among it. People who commit murder would fall into that category. Currently, 27 states authorize the death penalty, while 23 states and Washington, D.C. have abolished it. Even where it is legal, a relatively small number of executions are actually carried out.

And the enduring argument against the death penalty is that the poorest among us, those least able to afford top caliber legal representation, are the most likely to receive the death penalty. People who can afford expensive lawyers tend to escape with their lives. With Trump, they could probably buy their way out of the firing squad.

In any case, whether one approves or disapproves of the death penalty, the firing squad as the means of execution is pure Trump. A dramatic show. A show of domination. A show where Donald can show up to say, “Fire!”

Five states currently authorize the firing squad to carry out capital punishment: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. Not a surprise in the bunch.

The expansion of the methods of execution has been denounced by human rights groups and the pope as an attack on human dignity. Ours, not the guy with the blindfold and cigarette.