r/Foodforthought • u/guardian • 1d ago
Capital punishment is surging in the US – but after Christa Pike’s botched execution, what is its future?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/11/executions-us-christa-pike?referring_host=Reddit&utm_campaign=guardianacct6
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u/baldurcan 1d ago
After Christa pike's botched execution, they decided to livestream another convict's execution. What's next? A subscription system to watch people get executed?
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u/TickingTheMoments 1d ago
The future, it this regime is allowed to continue, will be Cruel and in your face.
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u/guardian 1d ago
Hi r/Foodforthought, this is Lucy from The Guardian. I wanted to share an interesting extract from our long read today, which focusses on the future of capital punishment in the US after the controversial botched execution of Christa Pike. The piece asks, will Pike's case, which has gripped the attention of the world, be the catalyst that unravels the use of the death penalty in the US?
An extract from the long read:
The events of the past 10 days – starting with Pike amicably assisting her executioners and ending with her waking up shackled to a Nashville hospital bed, her arms grotesquely swollen, facing a long and uncertain road to recovery – has thrown America into a frenzy. If this is the outcome of a punishment carried out in “all our names”, then what are we doing about it?
“This is a very big moment,” said Laura Porter, executive director at the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty, an alliance of 60 abolitionist groups. “When you see something as horrific as this, the impact is enormous, as it throws attention on the death penalty’s flaws.”
Six years ago, there was such confidence in the historic fading away of the practice that the authoritative Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) began its yearly report with the words: “Capital punishment continued to wither across the US in 2019”.
But as Mark Twain might have put it, reports of the death penalty’s own death turned out to be an exaggeration. Fast forward to last year, and DPI was recording that the 47 executions carried out in 2025 marked the highest incidence in 16 years.
On Thursday the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, breathlessly announced that Hasan would face a firing squad of soldiers at Fort Hood on 3 December in the first public execution to be staged in the US since 1936. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
The Pentagon’s plan to livestream Hasan’s execution prompted a second wave of desbelief that ricocheted around the globe , threatening to drown out even the consternation over Pike’s treatment.
Nationwide, the US is set to kill up to 38 people this year – the most recent just on Wednesday when Texas executed convicted murderer Jamaal Howard. That tally would be down from last year’s high, but still represent a larger display of state killing than in any year since 2013.
In cheerleading the revival of executions, Trump has been backed by a supporting cast of Christian nationalists. These Bible thumpers have injected their eye-for-an-eye brand of retributive justice into the wider Maga movement.
Meanwhile, Christa Pike's case still leaves so many questions, her lawyer Spivey said ruefully on Wednesday. “We have to ask, ‘How much suffering is enough?’”
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u/LeRoienJaune 1d ago
As Gramsci once said, now is the time of monsters. Regimes accelerate their violence as their power crumbles- typically the worst violence of a dictatorship is it's last. We see this in the USA as expressed in the public executions, the Iran war, and the Caribbean boat strikes. Far from being expressions of the security of the state, these are in fact expressions of desperation. They have squandered their dubious political mandate, their soft power, and even a good amount of their hard power (US missile stocks are depleted and the US has lost a significant portion of their AWACs and other air force). In other words, the killings will get worse until the regime is overthrown, whether by internal or external forces.
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u/EatDiveFly 1d ago
quick question: I always thought the sentence from the judge was something like "Hanged by the neck until you are dead" specifically to protect the state from botched executions. Ex, there was some original case where the rope broke and the criminal was set free. (could very well be a myth).
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u/Crazy_names 1d ago
Can't we just do medical exsanguination? Administer a sedative and an anti-voagulant, place an "IV" in an artery, and just open the valve into the drain? Let them slowly slip off to sleep and just not wake up. But I'm no doctor, I'm also in favorbof just bringing back the guillotine. As long g as its swift and sure.
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u/Smallwhitedog 1d ago
You'd need a qualified individual to place the IV. No licensed practitioner is going to do that.
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u/poozemusings 1d ago
Doctors want nothing to do with murdering people, which is the problem. As long as we have the death penalty, sure, bring back the guillotine. Have the whole jury who handed down the sentence watch in person, and have the Judge drop the blade.
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u/Crazy_names 1d ago
I'm not even a big Death Penelty supporter. For the most part I dont trust the people in the justice system to be absolutely sure and unbiased. But there are rare cases where it is incontrovertible like the Ft Hood shooting. So when it comes to the death penalty it should be rare, swift, and sure.
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u/poozemusings 1d ago edited 1d ago
What exactly is the motivation behind executing the fort hood shooter? It can’t be deterrence, because the death penalty is not a deterrent, especially for the kind of ideologically based crime he committed. It can’t be incapacitation, the guy is paralyzed and in prison. The only remaining rationale is really just revenge, you killed people so now we’re going to kill you. Which is just a primitive, emotional version of “justice” that we should really leave behind us if we want to advance as a society. Killing him by firing squad, and forcing 12 soldiers to go through the trauma of shooting in the chest an unarmed, paralyzed man in a wheelchair, isn’t going to make anything better. It’s not going to bring back his victims, and it’s going to create new trauma.
As an opponent of the death penalty, I do think that if it exists it is at least more honest to do it in a way that makes clear the brutality of what we are doing. Pretending it’s a humane medical procedure is just a way for people to deny the inherent violence of killing a human being in a captivity. But I’d rather it not exist at all, like it does in most democratic nations.
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u/ranthria 21h ago
I fall between you and the person you're responding to. I don't trust the justice system, with its perverse incentives and general incompetence, to reliably only execute the truly guilty.
That said, I do believe in executing the Ft. Hood shooter... just not publicly nor by firing squad. To me, it's a matter of utilitarianism. We know he did it beyond any shadow of a doubt; that's not really in question. Then, at the end of the day, it takes resources to keep him alive. Even if we were keeping him in the most squalid, barely livable conditions, there's still a price tag on it, and what are we as a society gaining by keeping him alive in that state?
As far as I'm concerned, in a cut and dry case like that (which is the exception, not the rule), once the death sentence has been passed and all appeals have been exhausted (which absolutely shouldn't take 17 years, but that's a different topic), it should be as simple as taking him to a ditch out behind the courthouse and giving him a Russian Suicide, two rounds in the back of the head. Or maybe there's a guillotine set up back there such that it's out of view of the public. At that point, I'm much less concerned about the physical means, as long as it's efficient and not overly gruesome.
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u/poozemusings 20h ago
In total, the death penalty in America is always more expensive than keeping someone alive for life in prison. The price comes from the court process and the appeals. Now you might say just get rid of the appeals, but we can’t do that if we want to avoid executing innocent people. There have been many cases of people on death row 20+ years who have been exonerated. We’ve got plenty of resources to keep people alive in prison. We have one of the largest prison populations in the world. I think that rationale you are putting forward is just another cover for really wanting revenge against the guy.
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u/ranthria 5h ago
I totally understand all that, and frankly, for the vast majority of cases that have to rightfully go through decades of appeals, I do agree that the death penalty is more trouble than its worth. It's only in completely cut and dry cases like Nidal Hasan's, where there is no investigation to be made, no case to be solved, that I support a quick, simple execution.
In the case of the Ft. Hood shooter, I don't think the appeals should have taken anywhere near as long as they did. There was no shadow of a doubt that he'd done it, he never even contended that he's not guilty, and frankly I think the only reason it took so long WAS to purposefully delay his execution as a means of "vengeance". The guy WANTS to die, and achieve his "martyrdom", so the only "vengeance" to be had against him is in delaying that, which I don't think is remotely worth the cost of keeping him alive and incurring all those court costs.
Again, as far as I'm concerned, this case should've been tried at court martial within a couple months, given mandatory review over the next couple months, then put a pair of bullets in his skull and bury him in an unmarked grave, or dump him in the ocean, or feed the corpse to some animals, or whatever means of disposal has the least fanfare associated with it.
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u/poozemusings 5h ago
There are mandatory appeals in death penalty cases that take years no matter what. He probably wanted it expedited, but the system doesn’t allow it. The point of the appellate process is just making sure someone had a fair trial and all proper legal procedures were followed, no matter if they are guilty or innocent. People have the idea that appeals are re-evaluating all the evidence and deciding guilt or innocence all over again, but that’s not the case. They are deciding whether the rules were followed, and if they weren’t you get a new a trial or new sentencing.
A big issue for his appeal was that the court let him represent himself. He represented himself and essentially put on no defense and presented no mitigation evidence to try to get a life sentence. It’s possible that if he was represented by competent attorneys they could have found something in his background or in his mental health that could have helped convince a jury to spare his life. And then there were plenty of other legal issues with his trial that needed to be litigated. He at some point would be automatically appointed public defenders who are ethically obligated to make all arguments possible to save his life.
Of course, he’s not a sympathetic case. But all of these rules are in place for good reason and need to be applied equally or else they are meaningless. If you want to have meaningful appellate review for the possibly innocent, you need to have it for cases like this as well.
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u/Egad86 18h ago
What’s the motivation to keep a person locked in a prison for decades with no hope of release?
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u/poozemusings 18h ago
General deterrence, incapacitation, and some level of retribution/punishment. Retribution that falls short of murdering someone. I think punishment is ok within limits, and one hard limit should be that we never kill people. I agree with you if you are suggesting we should have a more rehabilitative approach to criminal justice, that would be ideal.
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u/Egad86 11h ago
I do agree that actual rehabilitation and support after release are two things missing from the system. With what currently have, there is almost no chance of those things. About the only argument I can see is to keep them alive is as a patient for psych evals. but again, is that even happening in the current system?
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u/poozemusings 11h ago edited 8h ago
It’s an odd argument, because of the way you are framing it. I am not asking for them to be “kept alive” as if they are some medical patient on life support. I am asking for them not to be killed. People in prison are still people, often perfectly healthy and able to take care of themselves, who would rather not be in prison to begin with, and don’t want to die. Once people are taken captive, it is the responsibility of the person who decided to take their freedom to keep them alive. Even in prison, they read books, they have friends, they write, they talk to family. The reason they should be let live is because they are people, and I don’t think any human has the right to take the life of another human because it’s what we think they deserve.
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