Christa Pike at 18 years old when she was sentenced to death. She is now 50 and they are supposed to kill her this week

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Amine_Jouahri@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨videos@lemmy.world⁩

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/5fffb933606a.mp4

Christa’s mother drank heavily and used drugs while she was pregnant with Christa resulting in brain damage which caused Christa’s bipolar disorder.

When Christa was 14 months old, she suffered a seizure. Her mother refused to leave the bar to take her to the hospital.

After Christa was born, her mother left Christa and her brother without food, crawling in dog feces, while she drank with her boyfriends.

Her mother allowed her boyfriends to beat Christa and twist her nipples. One beat Christa with a belt and sexually assaulted her.

When Christa tried to commit suicide after that, a psychiatrist told her mother Christa was severely depressed and needed help. Her mother denied Christa further help and her bipolar disorder was not treated.

When Christa was raped at 17, one year to the day before she committed murder with her boyfriend, Christa’s mother didn’t care.

But Christa was happy to see her mother in court during her trial and all she wanted was a hug.

Yes, Christa committed an extremely heinous murder at 18. But I just wanted to share a little bit of her story with you — especially for all the folks rejoicing at her execution.

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Comments

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bertlewirth@lemmy.world ⁨37⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I’m not excusing what she did, but how is taking someone’s life going to bring back the victim, or give closure to the family of the victim? American “justice” is about revenge, not justice. The death penalty should be gone, utterly and completely. It’s barbaric.

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RedIce25@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
…And justice for all

Death penalty in place of mental health while the bastard pedophiles are elected to positions of power

A society practicing the death penalty will never improve

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- Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Here here, it is a barbaric and hamfisted revenge.
  
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FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Hey, look, cool news and all, oppose the death penalty I guess, but I don’t like how the video tries to show her as a frail little girl.

She took her classmate into the woods to torture then kill her.

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- CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You don’t beat a dog for its entire life and then act surprised when it kills someone.
  
  It’s not an excuse, beyond rumblings of materialist determination, but it is an explanation, and you should be asking yourself why this particular murderer has to die instead of all the others.
  
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  - FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m never surprised about any crimes, certainly the mother shares a lot of responsibility in this, but as a consequentialist I try to make the best use of my time to help the most people, and that does not include advocating for Christa because there are billions of better people more deserving of expending sympathy.
    
    Now, if you came to me and advocated for abolishing the death penalty and enhancing the reform system with free education, therapy, etc: I’m on board. But sure af not because of Christa.
    
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- brackled@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The video doesn’t “try” to show her as anything it just captures a moment in court. You can attribute to it what you want. What I see is the extreme results of bipolar disorder after a lifetime of abuse and lack of treatment. It is a stark example of a society that failed their citizen. Here is someone who had enough humanity somewhere in their system to just cry and want a hug from someone they loved before facing the consequences. I’m not even bipolar but I don’t know what kind of human being I would be if I literally faced abuse since infancy.
  
  To me the video doesn’t take away the heinousness of the crime, it just brings into the focus how these types of situations aren’t always some cut and dry stereotypical “evil person does evil things”.
  
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  - FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    They chose to show this moment. They didn’t choose images of the evidence or the grieving family of the murdered child, they chose this. That’s “trying” real hard, in my book.
    
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kmartburrito@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Pike, who is now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, one of their classmates at Knoxville Job Corps in 1995.

In case anyone else was curious about the crime she committed

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- infeeeee@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They also tortured her a bit before the murder:
  
  According to court testimony, for the next 30 minutes, Slemmer was taunted, beaten, and slashed. Shipp used a box cutter to carve a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive. Finally, Pike smashed Slemmer’s skull with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her.
  
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Obituarykidney@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Why was she imprisoned for 32 years of age was already sentenced to death? What’s the point? I don’t agree with the death penalty in general, but if you’re going to do it, just do it?

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- krimson@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Standard practice in the US. You know you will die but you do not know when and in the meantime you rot in jail for decades.
  
  Then sometimes an hour before you will be executed you hear you may get pardoned, and then a few hours later you will be executed anyway.
  
  Execution itself also goes wrong many times.
  
  USA! USA!
  
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- triptrapper@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not just imprisoned, she’s been in solitary for 30 fucking years.
  
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  - Obituarykidney@lemmy.world ⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    So when she does torture and murder it’s the death penalty, but when the system does it they just ignore it. Love that.
    
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BigTrout75@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So dumb. She requested a All female firing squad because she was concerned the injection and her small veins might be an issue.

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BaraCoded@literature.cafe ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Wow. Straight people’s right to reproduce should be conditionned to a psychiatric exam. Her mother should have gone to jail. This is fucking heartbreaking.

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- Lauchmelder@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Where does it say the mom was straight?
  
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cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s sad but world people have as much sympathy for a man on death row? Would they even care to read how bad his childhood was? Most people wouldn’t care. Let’s see if somebody takes up for a condemned man and how much social media attention it gains.

That said, I’m not strictly in favour of the death penalty. No matter what the penalty is, people will commit crimes. But we have to do something. I’m not sure what, though.

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- fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This isn’t about men. Stop trying to make it about men.
  
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- DougPiranha42@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If this is what cerebral hawks say, imagine how cringe would stupid hawks sound? Will anyone think about the poor men?
  
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hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That’s the whole issue. It’s like 50% actual narcissists without remorse and 50% just sad circumstances all around.

The death penalty is an extremely cruel way to “get rid of the problem” by fighting the symptom. But to get there, so many things would have gone wrong, and we should always prioritize fixing those things before ever thinking about punishment.

People love retribution but the truth is you can torture a murderer and that still won’t bring the victim back and even then that’s not satisfying to the victim’s family.

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