Midwek Musings 44 14.10.26

 What has civilisation come to?

By Malini Shankar

Digital Discourse

The botched / failed execution of Christa Paike, a death row convict in Tennessee in the United States of America is that of the first person in recorded history of Humankind who survived three attempts at execution and has lived to tell the tale. Albeit a ghastly one: - that the legal community doesn’t care two hoots to listen to. The botched execution should mark a watershed and set aside death penalty and execution from the annals of humanity’s history.

For any person to survive coma is bad enough,… to survive two attempts at execution in one day and then lapsing into coma, and worse waking up from coma…in this case the survivor of three attempted executions is a mental health patient being administered pentobarbital twice on one day for execution…. Then to wake up from coma after six days because her blood stream could not accept the lethal injection for execution … only to wake up disoriented and paralysed and then go back to a prison cell is ghastly enough. How cruel can destiny be on one person one will think. She seems to have been paralysed after being administered the lethal injection which was meant to have terminated her life. It did not work because her blood disorder did not let pentobarbital euthanise her…

Imagine how desperately lonely she might have felt when being led to the execution chambers. Then after being administered the lethal dose of pentobarbital she lapsed into what witnesses say a state of deep breathing. Her limbs turned purple. She remained in a state of limbo as her life did not end. State prosecution, the medical officers, - the jury and executioner called 911 / Emergency response as the lethal injection was not working and the death row convict was not dead. ER was not trained to handle this. No one was there to attend to this macabre emergency. The even more bizarre rules prescribed that the lethal injection can be administered in a particular dosage a maximum twice.

No amount of empathy or sensitivity or objective thinking or natural or artificial intelligence can quantify the trauma of emotions she has gone through in the period after her botched execution attempt when she lay in coma for six days after 30.09.2026. In the period after her botched execution when she was presumably in coma her mind would have been chasing light, suffering from tunnel vision, her vocal chords are most definitely (presumably) disengaged and dysfunctional, her limbs which turned purple during the attempt at execution are likely paralysed (one can only presume in the absence of recorded documentation by the medico legal team after the failed execution.

It is not to undermine the case for justice for the victim’s family. But executing her would not have served the interest for the victim’s family. Death penalty is justification of vendetta that is all…. In this case the victim Colleen Slemmer’s mother’s plea for justice would most certainly have not been quenched even if Paike had died in the execution attempt. I wonder what Colleen’s mother is going through now after Paike survived the execution…

These are instances / anecdote that need public documentation to conclude public discourse on the subject of death penalty and execution / human rights and mental health.

Paike has been accused of violent crime and tried for the murder of a fellow inmate in a prison. She was also tried for attempt to escape from prison.

Christa Paike’s brief Wiki profile can be read here. For those who do not have the patience to read this external link… Christa Paike suffered alcohol abuse when she was in her mother’s womb. Her psycho somatic anxieties were implanted in her psyche at embryonic stage itself. Suffering from extreme insecurity and anxiety she collaborated with her boyfriend and another person to threaten a woman who she perceived as a threat to her tenuous relationship with her boyfriend… in her trial for the murder of Colleen Slemmer her classmate, Paike disposed that she did not mean to kill Slemmer only wanted to threaten her grievously enough so that she would not interfere in her relationship with her boyfriend… Reflective of her mental health – including diagnosed bipolar Disorder, - Paike kept a fragment of the deceased victim Slemmer’s skull as a trophy with herself and returned it to Slemmer’s family (depriving the family of a closure with a dignified burial) and it also became a precious piece of evidence in Paike’s trial. Only a little before her date of execution did Paike volunteer to return the trophy but by then the piece / fragment of skull was in the custody of the Prosecution.

Christa Paike’s criminal record, mental health issues (which – mens rea in itself disqualifies one from death penalty in many countries) might be outweighed by her failure to be executed. Question arises if a person living with a debilitating train of mental health issue like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia is aware that one will be penalised for a criminal deed… whether the person so afflicted is aware of the scale of the crime one has committed.

In case a person is suffering from hallucinations or hearing voices not in the normal range or is wholly missing a conscience, or missing an emotional connect that can trigger a tear stemming from feeling, then, what purpose will be served by penalising the person with death penalty? If a person is suffering from extreme schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or any kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or emotional anxiety the person fosters no hope or positive worldview for oneself…. The person is constantly yo- yoing between life and death as if living and breathing itself is a cliff hanger. For people suffering from such emotional alienation death is a deliverance not at all a penalty. There is no cognition of guilt is a person suffering from a lack of legal / ethical perspective of life and death, right and wrong. Christa Paike was likely living in such a living hell ever since she was born. Again without public documentation one can only speculate…

The point is if the murdered victim has to get justice legal options have to evolve,… a space and time has to be created for criminals to understand the mistake they have committed and live to regret their criminal deeds. Death penalty robs society of an opportunity to see if the criminal regrets one’s criminal deeds.

Political prisoners, terrorists meted out death penalty to save society certainly calls for a different politico legal lens, but even there, correcting their crooked worldview would be more constructive than vindictive that death penalty bears.

My conclusion is: death penalty advocates, far right legislators should reconsider death penalty. I would say put yourself in the position of a person about to receive a lethal injection or about to be hanged or about to see the electric chair being ignited. To anticipate the final mortal passage is the ultimate milestone in the transition from mortal world. To survive that and come back paralysed in life and limb to a prison cell for solitary confinement is already Karma redemption in Hindu and Buddhist theology. Advocates of death penalty if you don’t want this experience on yourself or your loved ones, you will not advocate it for others.

It is time to rewrite legislation in criminal jurisprudence. Paike’s botched execution should mark a watershed for the constructive happier times, human and animal lives…