This whole shit is just wild. The state shouldn’t be murdering people. This chick brought home a chunk from the skull of the girl she killed. And now the state is fucking up so hard you can’t help but feel bad for her because we as empathetic people dont like suffering. Fucken rollercoaster.
She is being kept largely in solitary confinement, she said, “away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me”.
Such isolation was its own form of pain, she said, given that she spent the first 28 years on death row in solitary confinement.
She was 18 at the time of the murder. Most people are hardly the same person that they were that much of their life ago.
She was neglected by alcoholic parents,[12] and her attorneys said she was exposed to alcohol in the womb.[13] She was raped as a toddler and again at ages 11 and 17.[14][15] She attempted suicide at the age of 12 and in 1991 she was sent to a Juvenile Evaluation Center in Swannanoa, North Carolina
28 years of solitary confinement sounds needlessly cruel even for someone convicted of a terrible crime, however, it was arguably justified by her actions in prison. She tried to kill another inmate, for which she was convicted, and later, she tried to escape.
It’s also a normal response for the authorities to try to keep the murderer in prison, even if that means harsher conditions.
I have issues with the prison system in the USA. I think far too many people are imprisoned, and the system fails to rehabilitate people it could and should. That said, I do not want Christa Pike to escape, or be released into society.
She beat a girl to death and kept a chunk of her skull as a trophy, then later tried to strangle another prisoner. She showed herself to be an extreme danger to others and should be confined for the rest of her life, or until there is clear and convincing evidence that she is no longer dangerous.
This is a perfectly fine argument in a world where she hasn’t been exposed to torture. Her constitutional rights were so egregiously violated she deserves her sentence to be commuted.
If you have a problem with that, blame the people who tortured her on behalf of the state, not her.
One of the goals of imprisonment is to punish. I’m willing to agree that she has been punished enough.
Another goal is to protect society from people who have demonstrated an ability and willingness to harm others. I’d be entirely fine with moving Pike to a more comfortable prison or mental institution.
“Deserve” doesn’t enter into the conversation when someone is an obviously violent and dangerous person with no remorse. Repeal the death penalty, sure… But release the prisoner? No.
There is a man in Japan who was on Japanese death row for like 60 years. If you’re not aware, on Japanese death row, you’re in near complete isolation. This guy was in solitary for around six decades. AND HE WAS INNOCENT
Edit: also, Japanese death row doesn’t work the same as American and others’ death rows. They don’t tell Japanese death row inmates when they’ll be executed until less than an hour before they are to be executed. So this man spent 60 YEARS not knowing if the day he woke up is the day he died.
I never understood why the death penalty needed so much time to be administered. How does this shit not take a week to do? 28 years… torture and utter waste of money.
I mean I kinda agree with them. If you need decades to fully prove someone was guilty of something worth executing them for then you shouldn’t be executing them at all.
Imagine knowing you’re going to be killed by the state but never knowing when or how. I’d rather just take a bullet in the court room
What do you do when mental illness apparently makes you premeditate a murder, carve religious symbols into someone’s flesh, and smash their head like an ape getting at a coconut? You can’t make that right. They grouped up, got all edgey with their satanism, and murdered someone. Your dark past does not give you an excuse to rob others’ futures no matter your mental condition.
No one said it should be an excuse. And a possible solution in her case might have been a forced therapy; so she would also be locked away, just not in prison but a mental institution. If that’s better or worse depends on the institution. But at least the goal would be to right her mind and not punish her if there is no meaningful corrective result.
I’m not of the opinion that all minds can be “corrected”. This case was an especially nasty one, involving multiple people all targeting one person and luring her out away from everyone and mutilated her. The stain of malice cannot be denied here. Seems like everyone has skin in the game for mental illness but no one gives a shit about the hatred and loss of life.
Locked up in a mental institution is also punishment. It’s not like this is a large chillout area with fun games.
No idea how it is in the US, but in Germany this is an even worse punishment, because they don’t get a normal sentence. If they get locked up in jail, there is a time attached depending on the severity of the crime. But mental institution is basically “until deemed fit for society”. So if the staff there wants to fuck you up (or if you are actually a lost cause), they will simply never deem you fit for release and you stay there until eternity, pumped with drugs. And all of this without another judge looking into the case ever again (unless you happen to have very very good support from outside, but even then the judge will typically ask experts — so the doctors — who will just explain why you have to stay locked up).
There are no mental institutions like that in the States. Reagan ended that. That isn’t to say there aren’t any at all, but there are no asylums or anything like that. Most mentally ill become homeless and its fucked up. So an American saying someone needs mental help is basically saying they have no real recourse. I didnt think it was fun and games or a chill out area but I dont think the help she could get in the States would ever have been enough. I dont know what is enough looking at her stated reasonings for the murder. Thats not a problem we know how to simply fix. What I do know is, again, everyone hand waving that someone lost their life to this woman. You glazed over it here, instead going right to talking about mental institutions. Again.
Right, and presumably you’re an expert with at least one relevant PhD or other qualifications and experience who is able to determine what minds can and can not be “corrected”. You must also be an expert of the highest order to be capable of making that determination without speaking to her, or being so much as in the same room as her.
There is no evidence it was premeditated, and she didn’t carve religious symbols into anyone. There was a 1 symbol carved into the person, and it wasn’t by her. That person admitted to doing so in court.
Yeah no I read that. I would no longer find her guilty of premeditated murder and as I stated before she did NOT as confirmed by the person who carved said pentagram in her chest stated to police, carve any religious symbols into someone. Not only do I think she served her sentence now I think the state is guilty of torture and you should be legally eligible to be held liable for slander. “Familiarize yourself with the case”. Hopefully other people’s opinions teach you that your opinion isn’t absolute.
Slander ffs. Her and her cohorts went out, lured a woman by herself and tortured and killed her. Everyone seems to be forgetting this but when conservo AI bros get back what they hand out its karma.
There have been some troubled people that wanted to scare the Christians that were abusing them. And given the number of false convictions around the early and mid 1990s because of ‘satanism,’ anyone that brings it up just looks stupid. Purely, ridiculously stupid.
Which is why they were edgey carving that into her chest? I dont see how you are refuting that they carved a pentagram into her fucking chest here. Thats what I said. Thats what the satanism was. Do you think that was done in jest? Or that they were not being fucken edge lords when they did that? What are you trying to fucken say here? This thread makes no sense now.
Fix the society and the material conditions that allowed this to happen, and work to undo the harm that the failures of society caused that caused this to happen. This crime was completely preventable, and this person, given her personality this late in life after a lifetime of unimaginable and uninterrupted torture since the moment she was born, is obviously someone that would be a good person to have in society.
Its very unamerican, but its possible to acknowledge that someone has done something awful, is an awful person, and deserves to die, while simultaneously acknowledging that how we treat the worst among us shapes our humanity and our society.
The penal system should be about minimising harm to the public, and rehabilitating the perp to whatever extent possible.
Its fine to conclude that someone is irredeemable, but they’re still entitled to a lifetime of support to be their best self even if that’s in prison.
American culture is heavily focused on tit for tat transactions. Did bad murder = gets dead. She might deserve death but we are all lessened by giving it to her.
She was also repeatedly raped as a child. Sometimes you need to understand what lead a person to their crimes. If you can’t see past the reality of the perpetrator, and only care about obsessing over the most brutal parts of the crime instead of Pike’s lifetime of suffering, then your opinion isn’t related to justice, just revenge.
Revenge was most likely the motive for her trying to kill (only failed due to lack of time) the other death row inmate.
Committing premeditated revenge murder for making rude comments and possibly other actions is not simply “OK” because you had a rough time in the past. Other victims don’t get to just murder everyone they don’t like because they had a bad time. Hell, most rapists were probably raped them selves, not an excuse, considering other victims aren’t out there doing it.
This doesn’t matter. You are just too emotionally fixated on the details of the crime to have a good faith conversation about the constitutional implications of state sanctioned torture.
Torture is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. You cannot use it to punish some, and if you do, that person deserves restitution, prior crimes notwithstanding.
I already said in this thread multiple times that the state shouldn’t be able to murder people. We shouldn’t be here. She should just be sitting in a cell learning about her own brain and getting psychological help. But here are we. And everyone calling for her immediate freedom forget she has received no help and brutally, violently murdered someone with 2 other people. If the world would be how I want it to be, they’d be left to their community’s judgment. But modern people dont grow up in tightknit communities like we are supposed to. At least most of us dont anymore.
You literally said “most people change”. So yes, you indeed did bring most people into the conversation. Everyone here screams mental illness, but nobody wants to talk about the brutality of carving symbols into flesh and cracking bone with primitive tools.
The person I replied to did, I didnt see it wasnt you, but that means you didnt even read the whole thread just my comment and came in here with a shred of context. Good job.
Not to mention the conditions leading up to this could have been partially the fault of the state as well. Not saying people don’t have accountability for their own actions, but in the United States our mental health care is abysmal. So realistically, it’s a failure of the state coming and going. Yet all these groups are ready and willing to worship the state.
The story we have been told has a group of young adults going into the woods to smoke weed together. And then her murdering someone in a violent manner (stabbing over and over)… which very well could have been planned. Modern studies are starting to show that marijuana is tied to people having psychotic breaks in people with bipolar disorders. Which she was diagnosed as bipolar… So it could be completely unrelated… but this situation would be even more horrible if someday we find out she did infact have a psychotic break and none of it had been planned.
At 18 I probably would’ve done some equally fucked up shit. Murdering people for what they did before their brains finished developing is not only a waste of money but it gives the government absolute control over who lives and dies when I don’t even trust the government to fill potholes correctly.
That piece of skull is still in the custody of the state, and they refuse to return it to the victim’s family even through multiple lawsuits, so they aren’t even doing this for the victim’s family’s “closure” or whatever the line usually is in defense or the death penalty.
Use of sexist language to describe women, even violent criminals, is still sexism.
And now the state is fucking up so hard you can’t help but feel bad for her
I definitely don’t feel bad for her. What she just experienced wasn’t nearly as awful as what she made her victim experience. Oh, and she’s still alive, unlike her victim.
Its a complicated subject for me especially since I am just a nerd and not a law expert. Unfortunately for her the entire nation has been intimately inundated with her case, which is probably why I feel I can give my opinion. All said, I think I would, I would like to say I would. Torture is not anything that accomplishes something, its pure sadism.
What she and her cohorts did sickens me to the bone, as a many great things today do. But she still shouldn’t be tortured. It fixes nothing and warps the minds of its perpetrators. It is the hammer that turns all humans into nails, just not good.
I agree that it isn’t necessary and I think we should use methods far more instant and guaranteed for the death penalty. Still doesn’t make me feel bad for her though.
Dark future, indeed. The State should never have the right to murder anybody. The only person who should be able to decide if your life ends early is you.
This whole shit is just wild. The state shouldn’t be murdering people. This chick brought home a chunk from the skull of the girl she killed. And now the state is fucking up so hard you can’t help but feel bad for her because we as empathetic people dont like suffering. Fucken rollercoaster.
She was 18 at the time of the murder. Most people are hardly the same person that they were that much of their life ago.
Yikes.
There’s a solid argument that solitary confinement alone is torture. Twenty-eight years of it.
28 years of solitary confinement sounds needlessly cruel even for someone convicted of a terrible crime, however, it was arguably justified by her actions in prison. She tried to kill another inmate, for which she was convicted, and later, she tried to escape.
Trying to escape your captors is normal response.
It’s also a normal response for the authorities to try to keep the murderer in prison, even if that means harsher conditions.
I have issues with the prison system in the USA. I think far too many people are imprisoned, and the system fails to rehabilitate people it could and should. That said, I do not want Christa Pike to escape, or be released into society.
She beat a girl to death and kept a chunk of her skull as a trophy, then later tried to strangle another prisoner. She showed herself to be an extreme danger to others and should be confined for the rest of her life, or until there is clear and convincing evidence that she is no longer dangerous.
This is a perfectly fine argument in a world where she hasn’t been exposed to torture. Her constitutional rights were so egregiously violated she deserves her sentence to be commuted.
If you have a problem with that, blame the people who tortured her on behalf of the state, not her.
One of the goals of imprisonment is to punish. I’m willing to agree that she has been punished enough.
Another goal is to protect society from people who have demonstrated an ability and willingness to harm others. I’d be entirely fine with moving Pike to a more comfortable prison or mental institution.
“Deserve” doesn’t enter into the conversation when someone is an obviously violent and dangerous person with no remorse. Repeal the death penalty, sure… But release the prisoner? No.
There is a man in Japan who was on Japanese death row for like 60 years. If you’re not aware, on Japanese death row, you’re in near complete isolation. This guy was in solitary for around six decades. AND HE WAS INNOCENT
Edit: also, Japanese death row doesn’t work the same as American and others’ death rows. They don’t tell Japanese death row inmates when they’ll be executed until less than an hour before they are to be executed. So this man spent 60 YEARS not knowing if the day he woke up is the day he died.
I never understood why the death penalty needed so much time to be administered. How does this shit not take a week to do? 28 years… torture and utter waste of money.
Those darn appeals and trying to make sure someone is ACTUALY guilty before murdering them!
I mean I kinda agree with them. If you need decades to fully prove someone was guilty of something worth executing them for then you shouldn’t be executing them at all.
Imagine knowing you’re going to be killed by the state but never knowing when or how. I’d rather just take a bullet in the court room
Most people dont crack other’s skulls in and keep the pieces either
if you punish mental illness, then society itself is sick.
In the US. Can confirm society itself is very sick.
What do you do when mental illness apparently makes you premeditate a murder, carve religious symbols into someone’s flesh, and smash their head like an ape getting at a coconut? You can’t make that right. They grouped up, got all edgey with their satanism, and murdered someone. Your dark past does not give you an excuse to rob others’ futures no matter your mental condition.
No one said it should be an excuse. And a possible solution in her case might have been a forced therapy; so she would also be locked away, just not in prison but a mental institution. If that’s better or worse depends on the institution. But at least the goal would be to right her mind and not punish her if there is no meaningful corrective result.
I’m not of the opinion that all minds can be “corrected”. This case was an especially nasty one, involving multiple people all targeting one person and luring her out away from everyone and mutilated her. The stain of malice cannot be denied here. Seems like everyone has skin in the game for mental illness but no one gives a shit about the hatred and loss of life.
Locked up in a mental institution is also punishment. It’s not like this is a large chillout area with fun games.
No idea how it is in the US, but in Germany this is an even worse punishment, because they don’t get a normal sentence. If they get locked up in jail, there is a time attached depending on the severity of the crime. But mental institution is basically “until deemed fit for society”. So if the staff there wants to fuck you up (or if you are actually a lost cause), they will simply never deem you fit for release and you stay there until eternity, pumped with drugs. And all of this without another judge looking into the case ever again (unless you happen to have very very good support from outside, but even then the judge will typically ask experts — so the doctors — who will just explain why you have to stay locked up).
There are no mental institutions like that in the States. Reagan ended that. That isn’t to say there aren’t any at all, but there are no asylums or anything like that. Most mentally ill become homeless and its fucked up. So an American saying someone needs mental help is basically saying they have no real recourse. I didnt think it was fun and games or a chill out area but I dont think the help she could get in the States would ever have been enough. I dont know what is enough looking at her stated reasonings for the murder. Thats not a problem we know how to simply fix. What I do know is, again, everyone hand waving that someone lost their life to this woman. You glazed over it here, instead going right to talking about mental institutions. Again.
Right, and presumably you’re an expert with at least one relevant PhD or other qualifications and experience who is able to determine what minds can and can not be “corrected”. You must also be an expert of the highest order to be capable of making that determination without speaking to her, or being so much as in the same room as her.
There is no evidence it was premeditated, and she didn’t carve religious symbols into anyone. There was a 1 symbol carved into the person, and it wasn’t by her. That person admitted to doing so in court.
Please familiarize yourself with the case before commenting:
https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1998/pike.html
Yeah no I read that. I would no longer find her guilty of premeditated murder and as I stated before she did NOT as confirmed by the person who carved said pentagram in her chest stated to police, carve any religious symbols into someone. Not only do I think she served her sentence now I think the state is guilty of torture and you should be legally eligible to be held liable for slander. “Familiarize yourself with the case”. Hopefully other people’s opinions teach you that your opinion isn’t absolute.
Slander ffs. Her and her cohorts went out, lured a woman by herself and tortured and killed her. Everyone seems to be forgetting this but when conservo AI bros get back what they hand out its karma.
it’s amazing when you can pinpoint Americans.
Factually not what happened, but please enlighten me with your elevated world view.
There has never been a Satanic ritual related death in US history.
There have been some troubled people that wanted to scare the Christians that were abusing them. And given the number of false convictions around the early and mid 1990s because of ‘satanism,’ anyone that brings it up just looks stupid. Purely, ridiculously stupid.
Which is why they were edgey carving that into her chest? I dont see how you are refuting that they carved a pentagram into her fucking chest here. Thats what I said. Thats what the satanism was. Do you think that was done in jest? Or that they were not being fucken edge lords when they did that? What are you trying to fucken say here? This thread makes no sense now.
you’re not an expert. just some random idiot.
Okay Mr expert then, what the fuck is up? What do we do?
Fix the society and the material conditions that allowed this to happen, and work to undo the harm that the failures of society caused that caused this to happen. This crime was completely preventable, and this person, given her personality this late in life after a lifetime of unimaginable and uninterrupted torture since the moment she was born, is obviously someone that would be a good person to have in society.
Very broad strokes with no actionable plan, cool. Is wishing praxis?
If you define any desire to kill as mental illness…
well good luck with your utopia of happy sociopaths pretending to be mentally ill and getting re-released to murder again.
Its very unamerican, but its possible to acknowledge that someone has done something awful, is an awful person, and deserves to die, while simultaneously acknowledging that how we treat the worst among us shapes our humanity and our society.
The penal system should be about minimising harm to the public, and rehabilitating the perp to whatever extent possible.
Its fine to conclude that someone is irredeemable, but they’re still entitled to a lifetime of support to be their best self even if that’s in prison.
American culture is heavily focused on tit for tat transactions. Did bad murder = gets dead. She might deserve death but we are all lessened by giving it to her.
This is probably the only thing needing to be said in all honesty.
She was also repeatedly raped as a child. Sometimes you need to understand what lead a person to their crimes. If you can’t see past the reality of the perpetrator, and only care about obsessing over the most brutal parts of the crime instead of Pike’s lifetime of suffering, then your opinion isn’t related to justice, just revenge.
Revenge was most likely the motive for her trying to kill (only failed due to lack of time) the other death row inmate.
Committing premeditated revenge murder for making rude comments and possibly other actions is not simply “OK” because you had a rough time in the past. Other victims don’t get to just murder everyone they don’t like because they had a bad time. Hell, most rapists were probably raped them selves, not an excuse, considering other victims aren’t out there doing it.
Again, having a horrid past does not excuse her actions. The murder still took place and the stated reasoning was jealousy.
Nothing excuses her crimes, but being tortured should absolutely excuse her conviction.
I’m sure her victim would feel great about that, or you know, nothing at all because she smashed her head in with a piece of asphalt.
This doesn’t matter. You are just too emotionally fixated on the details of the crime to have a good faith conversation about the constitutional implications of state sanctioned torture.
Torture is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. You cannot use it to punish some, and if you do, that person deserves restitution, prior crimes notwithstanding.
I already said in this thread multiple times that the state shouldn’t be able to murder people. We shouldn’t be here. She should just be sitting in a cell learning about her own brain and getting psychological help. But here are we. And everyone calling for her immediate freedom forget she has received no help and brutally, violently murdered someone with 2 other people. If the world would be how I want it to be, they’d be left to their community’s judgment. But modern people dont grow up in tightknit communities like we are supposed to. At least most of us dont anymore.
We are not talking about most people though.
You literally said “most people change”. So yes, you indeed did bring most people into the conversation. Everyone here screams mental illness, but nobody wants to talk about the brutality of carving symbols into flesh and cracking bone with primitive tools.
I literally never talked to you before in my life.
What is there to talk about? Its brutal and fucked up. What else is there to say?
“Most people” does not matter when we talk about a person that is clearly not like most people. In their upbringing and in their actions.
The person I replied to did, I didnt see it wasnt you, but that means you didnt even read the whole thread just my comment and came in here with a shred of context. Good job.
Cry me a river.
So insightful. Thank you for the discussion fellow reader. Glad we could come to a null understanding
She really never stood a chance to assimilate into the community.
Not to mention the conditions leading up to this could have been partially the fault of the state as well. Not saying people don’t have accountability for their own actions, but in the United States our mental health care is abysmal. So realistically, it’s a failure of the state coming and going. Yet all these groups are ready and willing to worship the state.
The story we have been told has a group of young adults going into the woods to smoke weed together. And then her murdering someone in a violent manner (stabbing over and over)… which very well could have been planned. Modern studies are starting to show that marijuana is tied to people having psychotic breaks in people with bipolar disorders. Which she was diagnosed as bipolar… So it could be completely unrelated… but this situation would be even more horrible if someday we find out she did infact have a psychotic break and none of it had been planned.
At 18 I probably would’ve done some equally fucked up shit. Murdering people for what they did before their brains finished developing is not only a waste of money but it gives the government absolute control over who lives and dies when I don’t even trust the government to fill potholes correctly.
No you wouldnt because you didn’t. But yeah the government should never be allowed to murder people because thats fucked.
deleted by creator
Two added notes:
What? The states is holding on to her skull fragment?
Is chick sexist now? What?
What was the sexist language?
Its even worse than that.
The state literally mailed other parts of the victims body back to her mother --years later and unannounced and unmarked.
In don’t recall the exact parts, but it was extremely fuckn callous
Sorry about the cancer website, but it seems an in depth article and published before the recent debacle
https://www.unilad.com/news/crime/christa-pike-victims-mother-details-16-year-battle-to-recover-remains-297681-20260918
I definitely don’t feel bad for her. What she just experienced wasn’t nearly as awful as what she made her victim experience. Oh, and she’s still alive, unlike her victim.
I feel bad that a Human is being tortured. Its not necessary and doesnt fix anything.
Would you say this about any criminal, regardless of the offense?
I’m not trying to argue anything. It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about lately and have debated with myself over the extent of this.
Its a complicated subject for me especially since I am just a nerd and not a law expert. Unfortunately for her the entire nation has been intimately inundated with her case, which is probably why I feel I can give my opinion. All said, I think I would, I would like to say I would. Torture is not anything that accomplishes something, its pure sadism.
What she and her cohorts did sickens me to the bone, as a many great things today do. But she still shouldn’t be tortured. It fixes nothing and warps the minds of its perpetrators. It is the hammer that turns all humans into nails, just not good.
I agree that it isn’t necessary and I think we should use methods far more instant and guaranteed for the death penalty. Still doesn’t make me feel bad for her though.
Dark future, indeed. The State should never have the right to murder anybody. The only person who should be able to decide if your life ends early is you.