By Rich Kozlovich
Christa Pike is now 50 and was going to be executed by firing squad because her attorneys claim her 8th amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment would be violated by execution via lethal injection. So she was getting a firing squad and was demanding ..... demanding mind you.....an all-woman firing squad for her execution.
Her attorneys attempted to get her off with an insanity plea..... where did I hear that before? But here's what's really nuts. It's taken 31 years to execute this lunatic, and then it was decided she'd be executed via lethal injection, which failed.. twice... and she survived. She was then taken to a hospital and put on life support, and she's been revived. Why? Why in the world would they put a person to be executed on life support?
Daniel Flynn over at American Spectator noted:
Christa Pike's lawyer describes her as "angry" in the wake of her surviving her scheduled execution. Years ago, as chronicled in
a back page piece in the print American Spectator, I felt every emotion but anger when the nursing home that eight hours earlier had announced my dad" death suddenly announced him alive. "She is angry and confused about everything right now," attorney Randy Spivey told reporters. "She is very aware that the state tried to execute her." Does not her anger predate her botched execution?
She tortured and murdered a young woman, and succumbed to a dark-arts fascination with Satan, 31 years ago. One does not walk down that path by embodying The Partridge Family" "Come on, Get Happy" theme song, after all. When one cheats death, anger does not strike as the appropriate emotion. But regulating emotions does not rank as a strong suit of death row denizens.
Perhaps we should review what she did.
She decided because Colleen Slemmer waved at her boyfriend she was trying to steal him from her, so, she lured her to a secluded location, along with her boy friend, and beat her to death. While Slemmer begged for her life Pike slashed her with a box cutter carving a pentagram in her chest while still alive, she also used a meat cleaver in this murder. With a large chunk of asphalt she smashed her head and took a piece of Slemmer's skull as a "souvenir." A horror that according to investigators lasted for 30 minutes.
Pike got the death penalty and her boyfriend who was a year younger that Pike, 17, got life without parole. How does being 17 make a monster murderer less culpable than being 18 in such a vile act? And now "Republican Governor Bill Lee has canceled all executions for 2026 and ordered an investigation", Make no mistake, her attorney's are claiming she's “endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty”, and want her sentence commuted, which will most likely happen. But I think it fair to ask what form of penalty could be more cruel than the horrors Pike and her boyfriend perpetrated on Colleen Slemmer?
If there's any anger that should be displayed it should be the public's anger at the state's incompetence, and the insanity of the American system of justice in these cases. Thirty one years to execute this women in what was an open and shut case. It’s clear there are people who will never stop committing crimes irrespective of the penalty, but it’s also clear…. at least to me…..the death penalty is essential for good social order, especially when the evidence is so profound as to the guilt of the perpetrator as it is in this case.
As British Prime Minister Gladstone said in 1868, "Justice delayed is justice denied." Nothing's changed.
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