Do We Do Death for Sport?

‘C hrista Pike Sentenced to Lifetime Execution.” The headline was from The Onion, the news parody website. But if you put it to a poll on X, it would have likely come in second only to shooting her between the eyes while she was unconscious after the State of Tennessee failed to execute her. It seems somewhat bizarre that at a time when advocacy groups and mainstream media outlets are cheerleading prescriptions and other forms of doctor assistance for “suicide,” for not the first time even this year, the Volunteer State couldn’t pull off a successful intravenous pentobarbital delivery to a convicted murderer. Two doses are believed to have gone into her tissue instead of her bloodstream. I’d like to think it’s because of the innate goodness of a state known for its commitment to civil society — it just couldn’t inflict death. But, of course, that doesn’t follow, because it wound up being a kind of torture. “As it should be,” some reacted. After all, that’s what she did to her victim all those decades ago. As with most of life, it’s more complicated than that. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn the right lessons.

“Where am I, and who are you?” we are told were Pike’s new first words. “She’s asked about her team. She’s asked about the victim’s family,” one of her lawyers said. After more than 30 years on death row for a heinous crime, Pike woke up after six days of unconsciousness, understandably confused and “frustrated,” one of her lawyers said. While she was sleeping, the governor put a hold on executions. He’s being called on to commute her death sentence. That only seems right and just at this point.

And I say that knowing full well that what she did at 18 was barbaric — complete with hat tips to the Devil. A pentagram was carved into the chest of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student. After beating and knifing Slemmer to death, Pike kept a piece of her victim’s crushed skull as a souvenir to show off the next morning.

But we are not a people that lowers itself to barbarism. Unless, perhaps, there is an unborn baby involved and an abortion has been requested. Then we will crush skulls, too, and even leave babies to die if the abortion is botched. And yet we don’t treat murderers this way — we have witnesses to the planned execution, and when Tennessee failed, ambulances arrived at the prison, and Pike was given lifesaving treatment. I suppose we do that because it’s harder to look away from a full-grown adult — although when it comes to assisted suicide, we are willing to overlook that, too.

Looking at the Pike experience, the solution should not be firing squads — a more efficient way of doing the killing. The response should be to err on the side of life. Including long before a crime has ever been committed.

Pike was found to be bipolar, among her other mental-health diagnoses. She was raped throughout her childhood, first by her grandmother’s boyfriend. Her first attempted suicide was when she was twelve. Pike was failed by adults in her life over and over again. One of her accomplices in Slemmer’s murder was her “boyfriend,” who reportedly hit and kicked her as well as threatened her with a razor blade. She supposedly believed there was love there — because the girl may have never experienced the real thing.

I’m opposed to the death penalty. Saint Augustine is above my pay grade, so, as with “just war,” I am sure there are circumstances in which it is needed. The United States in 2026 doesn’t make the cut. Life without parole should be sufficient — it’s life knowing what transpired. In a case like Pike’s, that includes medical and pastoral help to see it in a humane context.

Now we have the secretary of the “Department of War” announcing his desire for the upcoming livestream execution of the Fort Hood murderer, Nidal Malik Hasan. (I use scare quotes because I hate the name change — it doesn’t reflect what our preference should be: peace over war. War, only when necessary.)

In a country where we routinely end the lives of the unborn while pretending it is merely women’s health care, and even freedom, we are going to publicly celebrate the killing of a jihadist. And make no mistake, it will be celebrated. That’s what we do. I was outside the White House after midnight in May 2011 when it was announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed. There was champagne and cigars and cheering. I was in New York on 9/11. A friend was murdered that day — a murder I even felt responsible for because of a change of plans that directly affected her. I lived in fear for a long time, like many of us — and to this day I’m acutely aware of the ways it changed us, including making us more painfully aware of the Islamic militant threat to the American way of life. And yet the scene was repulsive. It was beneath our commitment to human life. That’s not a criticism of how the military operation went down; it is of how low we chose to go in response to the news.

Instead of the swagger of wielding death ourselves — even when arguments can be made for its moral justification — how about we double down on protecting life? Let’s not make martyrs of murderers and terrorists. Giving life support to Christa Pike was the right thing to do. Sentencing a severely traumatized, mentally ill young woman to death never was. A culture of life requires us to protect the innocent and show mercy even to the guilty. This does not mean that a nation should turn the other cheek after a terrorist attack, but it does mean that it should refuse to turn a prisoner’s death into a public spectacle.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.