From Al Jazeera · Belén Fernández · · 2m
Tennessee execution fails, US hypocrisy exposed
Christa Pike's botched lethal injection in Tennessee raises questions about US double standards on capital punishment and state killing.
In brief
Christa Pike's botched lethal injection in Tennessee raises questions about US double standards on capital punishment and state killing. Christa Pike's failed execution in Tennessee by lethal injection highlights US double standards in criticising other nations' capital punishment while maintaining its own death…
Woman set to make history
Christa Pike, fifty years old, was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee since eighteen twenty. She had been on death row for a crime committed when she was eighteen.
Pike's troubled past
Pike murdered a fellow female student. She had suffered rape and sexual abuse since she was a toddler and had been diagnosed with mental illness. She later admitted: it took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done.
“It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done.”
Execution attempt fails
On Wednesday in Tennessee, Pike was injected with lethal drugs but remained alive. The operation was called off and she was rushed to hospital. Pike had requested execution by firing squad but was denied.
Lawyers call it torture
According to Pike's lawyers, the failed execution amounts to chemical torture. The degree of brain damage Pike may have sustained due to oxygen deprivation remains to be seen.
Racial disparity in death row
The Death Penalty Information Center reported that since nineteen seventy-three, at least two hundred three people wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the US have been exonerated. Black people comprise forty percent of the death row population despite being only twelve percent of the US population.
US applies double standard
When Iran executes people, the US condemns it as barbaric. When the US executes people, it calls it legitimate domestic criminal justice. The prevailing double standard goes something like this: when Iran executes people, it's a moral abomination and a crime. When the US executes people, it's a legitimate exercise in domestic criminal justice.
“When Iran executes people, it's a moral abomination and a crime. When the US executes people, it's a legitimate exercise in domestic criminal justice.”
State pauses executions
As Pike remained unconscious in a Tennessee hospital, the state paused executions for the remainder of the year. President Donald Trump reasoned that it shouldn't be very difficult to kill someone by injection, notwithstanding what happened in Tennessee.
“it shouldn't be very difficult”
The one thing
Christa Pike's failed execution in Tennessee by lethal injection highlights US double standards in criticising other nations' capital punishment while maintaining its own death penalty system.
