Back in 1995, Christa Pike lured a teenage girl into the woods. Pike and her boyfriend attacked Colleen Slemmer, viciously tortured her for 30 minutes while she begged for her life, beat her to death and crushed her skull. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer's skull as a trophy. It was a truly shocking crime, especially when committed by woman who was 18 years old.
After going to prison, Pike assaulted and attempted to murder another inmate by strangling her to death. Had Pike been hanged within a couple years of her conviction, that attempted murder would never have happened. Keeping vicious murderers in prison instead of executing them not only endangers guards that may be assaulted, but also endangers other inmates. As we saw with Ted Bundy, it also endangers the general public in the event of an escape. Bundy murdered two women and a child after he escaped from custody. Pike, of course, attempted to escape prison.
Lethal injection is a fundamentally dishonest form of execution. The goal is to medicalize the procedure and make it more palatable to the general public. Instead of making it clear that we are carrying out the harshest form of justice possible, we make it look like someone is getting anesthesia before surgery. But lethal injection has a failure rate twice as high as the electric chair or hanging, as we saw with the botched execution of Pike. She should have been hanged or electrocuted, not given a lethal injection.
The death penalty is a fundamentally good and righteous thing. First, foremost and primarily, it protects further innocent people from being raped or murdered or both. A dead criminal cannot rape or murder anyone. God ordered the death penalty in His Word, and that was given after the Great Flood. Executing murderers is not optional and is actually commanded, and our government is in rebellion against His will not only when we refuse to exterminate murderers, but also when we allow them to live more than three decades after their vicious crimes. Every single day that Pike has been allowed to live is an insult to Colleen Slemmer and her family. The state of Tennessee should move to finish Pike's execution as soon as possible, regardless of whether she ever wakes up.
Christa Pike Deserves to die
Lethal injection has a failure rate twice as high as the electric chair or hanging. Abolish it.
