Debate Over Lethal Injection and Capital Punishment
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike, 50, by lethal injection for the murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, committed when Pike was 18. After two injections of pentobarbital on Wednesday, witnesses described her snoring loudly around 40 minutes later, and she was taken to a medical facility; her condition was not reported. Tennessee’s governor then ordered a halt to executions. The episode was the second time in months that an execution had not gone as planned.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage is simply more complete on the failed execution itself, then uses those facts to argue the death penalty should end. Right-leaning coverage skips the chamber and the state's response and asks "whose fault that was." Those are not the same story. The Guardian reports a halt to executions ordered by the governor. National Review never reports that halt, and never describes what witnesses saw after the injections.
Left-leaning coverage opens by asking the kindest way to kill and by describing loud snoring after the injections. Right-leaning coverage opens on whether the author is lying to himself about the death penalty and on what the modern state gets wrong about execution.
What actually went wrong in the two pentobarbital injections, and is Pike still alive?
Bottom line
A reader of National Review would not learn that Tennessee's governor halted executions after Pike's failed injection. A reader of the Guardian would not be asked whether medicalizing the death penalty erases deterrence.
The receipts — 4 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Medicalizing and sanitizing capital punishment erase the deterrence it is supposed to create
- It is the second botched killing in months
- Pike endured sexual abuse and rape by three perpetrators in childhood, as well as beatings and neglect
- Pike was taken to a medical facility, her condition unknown
The Left View
The Guardian argues that Pike’s case shows cruelty is inherent in capital punishment, not an accident of technique. Lethal injection, it says, was meant to be a humane alternative to hanging, electrocution, and firing squads, but autopsy analysis has provided “compelling evidence that suffering is inherent”; injections, especially those using paralytic drugs, have “merely disguised” that suffering to reduce “the discomfort of witnesses.” The editorial stresses Pike’s childhood sexual abuse, rape, beatings, and neglect, and that bipolar disorder and PTSD were diagnosed only after trial and were not adequately presented by her lawyers. Sandra Babcock, who has acted for Pike, is quoted arguing that executing her would confirm the penalty is reserved “not for the worst of the worst, but for the most damaged and vulnerable among us.” Citing the United States’ place in a “shameful minority” of executing countries and a drop in public support from 80 percent in 1994 to 52 percent last year, the paper concludes that “the search for a humane way to kill is inherently preposterous” and that the death penalty itself should be rejected.
The Right View
National Review calls it “a scandal that Christa Pike’s execution was botched” but insists “we must ask whose fault that was,” shifting the issue from the legitimacy of the penalty to responsibility for the failure. A second piece argues that “medicalizing and sanitizing capital punishment erase the deterrence it is supposed to create,” locating the error in lethal injection’s clinical form rather than in the decision to execute.
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is that suffering is built into execution regardless of method: it cites autopsy evidence that lethal injection disguises pain, and Pike’s unpresented history of abuse plus post-trial mental-health diagnoses to show, in Babcock’s words, that the penalty falls on “the most damaged and vulnerable.” The right’s strongest argument is that the scandal is the botch and its causes, and that wrapping death in a medical procedure strips punishment of the deterrent force it is supposed to have. The central unresolved tension is whether a failed lethal injection proves that state killing cannot be made acceptable, or that the state has chosen a sanitized method that both hides and bungles the punishment.
3 sources
More stories
The week's bottom lines, in your inbox
One email a week: the five stories that mattered and what they actually mean. Free.