Recently the BBC published a very important video that everyone who is interested in this issue should watch. It is an eyewitness account of the state of Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Christa Pike, presented by a veteran journalist and linked below:
Capital punishment is in and of itself a highly polarizing, highly controversial issue. No doubt everyone has an opinion, usually a very strong one, either for or against it.
Personally I am mostly opposed to it, especially in practice, although I understand why we have it. Both Jordan Peterson and Teal Swan have offered some very interesting insights that can be applied to put the issue in a different, less conventional light and I think those perspectives are also valuable and highly worthy of consideration.
In light of Teal’s comments I am reminded that my mother once noted, after an event at which we met William Styron, that people who struggle with depression often consider life to be a much worse punishment than death.
But today I would like to point out something else that I found particularly striking from John North’s account. As he describes the rustles of preparations behind the scenes, and in particular the way the lighting changed as the blinds went up and the not-so-lethal injection was about to begin, what he was describing was not so much a solemn duty about to be performed, but a theater. The State, unseen but looming large over the entire proceeding, turned a helpless prisoner into a spectacle intended to showcase its exercise of power over life and death. Except the State cannot create, only destroy. And in this case, it utterly failed even to do that.
This is not meant to be a religious article, but it is hard to escape certain parallels, in particular the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, or turning Christa Pike into some sort of Christ figure. Neither of these images casts the State in a particularly flattering light, and none of this excuses the murder that was committed thirty years ago. But the State does not need our help when it comes to looking bad, it did that perfectly well by itself.
Sympathy for the victim, Colleen Slemmer, and her family does not preclude us from having some sympathy for Christa Pike, too. She has been reduced to being a pawn in what is perhaps the cruelest game, she is most certainly being tortured now even if that was arguably not the case before, and at some point if we refuse to show mercy we as a society become even more bloodthirsty and sadistic than an actual Satanic murderer. Revenge is not justice, and at some point it becomes a moral imperative to call off the dogs and maybe even reflect a little bit on our own shortcomings. In this case we are now well past that point.
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