As both of my website’s regular readers know, I am opposed to capital punishment. We should not kill anyone unless it is absolutely necessary, and if we have a prisoner securely and permanently confined, to the point he is unable to resist his execution, then he is sufficiently helpless enough that it is no longer necessary to kill him.
But whether you support or oppose capital punishment, one thing is clear: we sure are inept and incompetent in administering it! The Volunteer State just tried, and failed, to execute Christa Pike, 50, for a gruesome murder she committed when she was 18. She was sentenced to death, while her 17-year-old boyfriend and accomplice was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; being a minor at the time of the crime, he was not eligible for capital punishment.
Though I am opposed to capital punishment, I have exactly no sympathy for Miss Pike. She was pleading for her life, which could have been another twenty or thirty or forty years locked in a cell for twenty-three hours a day. To me, that would be a fate worse than death, but I suppose it’s too easy for me to say, since saying it does not put me in the execution chamber. Continue reading







