“Will there be a reprieve?” was the first question. No sooner had there been a reprieve, before news of Christa Pike’s failed execution was breaking, in all its sickening detail. There are three aspects of Christa’s case that gave me reason to question what was happening here. By which I mean seriously questioning the death penalty as a punishment in this particular case, beyond any more general questions over the ethics of capital punishment.

First, Christa’s age at the time she committed the crime. She was 18. If she was convicted again today the outcome might be quite different – eighteen is the threshold that defines a ‘juvenile’ under US law. She was, by any understanding, very young. As pointed out in this letter, current neurological understandings of brain development suggest the brain keeps developing till around the age of 25. And, what people do when they are 18-year-olds, versus what they might become, can be two very different things.

Then there were the revelations about the abuse she suffered as a child – this sitting at the extreme end of childhood sexual abuse. The odds of her having a normal life had perhaps been stacked against her from a young age. I was reminded here of some of the incarcerated people I have written to over the years, as part of a prisoner correspondence program. Christa’s case was not dissimilar to some of these cases, in terms of both age at offending and adverse childhood experiences. Not for the first time, I considered that some of the extreme experiences people went through as children, were almost inevitably going to create issues of some sort in later life. Some of those that go on to become serious offenders were victims first.

Third, the matter of accountability and punishment. What struck me here is that Christa having been in jail since the age of 18, on death row, until her present age at 50, would in itself seem to have met the requirement for punishment by a “do the crime, serve the time” measure. Yet, here she was all these decades later, being subjected to death as if the balance was still wholly owing as it had been on Day 1. Now, some will no doubt argue that it is, and always will be, because her victim was deprived of life, and her victim’s family was left without her, and nothing is going to change that or bring her back to them. And it is this last point in particular which is pertinent, I think: making a perpetrator suffer all manner of punishments doesn’t undo the loss of life, or the loss to family, or the heartache more generally. In the case of the death penalty, it repeats what it seeks to condemn, adding further misery and suffering in the process.

I have to say that even reading the news about this case felt like a form of collective misery. The thought of an execution being something that people could volunteer to watch only added to the inhumanity of it – at this point it felt a bit like like being back in the days of public lynchings and witch burnings. Not only that, but subjecting a victim of childhood sexual crime to this level of coercion and humiliation was beyond any comprehension of reasonable justice. Finally, research indicates that the death penalty does not serve any more of a deterrent effect for committing crimes than life imprisonment.

Remarkably, Christa not only survived her attempted execution but appears to have recovered to some extent, which raises the question of what might happen now. To my mind, there is potential for Christa to put her experiences to use in ways that might be socially beneficial and helpful. An obvious question is why people commit these kinds of crimes, and how to lower the likelihood of them happening in the first place. On that count, Christa’s experiences might usefully inform a preventative approach, if they haven’t already done so.

The case of an army psychiatrist

Christa hadn’t even left hospital after the failed attempt on her life, before this case was being publicly aired, or re-aired. Here again was news of the death penalty being invoked, but in a case of a very different nature. This was followed by the decision to livestream the execution of Hasan by firing squad. It is a case which sits at the intersection of a military, psychiatric and religious — specifically a radicalised religious – context.  That these three institutions might, under certain circumstances, intersect and create the psychological backdrop for the kind of offending committed here I do not find entirely surprising. I will take a look at the first two below, and consider how they might be illogical and dubious at the best of times.

First, the military context. Here there is the not-so-trivial matter of state and socially sanctioned tribal violence, where violence is normally not something that is allowed or condoned. This hinges on the notion of ‘the enemy’; that group of ‘others’ at which one is going to take aim, sometimes for no other reason than that the state has deemed it justified to do so. There must be willingness to get involved in violence – even in countries that are at peace – in a way that would normally meet the threshold for some sort of disorder.  That there might be latent mental issues within the military should perhaps come as no surprise, then. It also raises the question of how one might reasonably detect or handle other forms of extremism or radicalisation within such a context. Glorifying guns and weapons? Not tolerated in civilian life, yet paraded about publicly and given the semblance of being inherently ‘honourable’ as part of military events. As I said before, a dubious institution at the best of times.

Then we have psychiatry, renowned for pathologizing distress so that it becomes a disorder of the individual, rather than any sickness on the part of a society or its institutions. An army psychiatrist would likely see very many cases of what the profession calls “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”, or what in this context might otherwise be described as “the adverse mental consequences of being involved in the operations of the dubious and illogical institution known as the military”. The military, in counselling such individuals, would likely have in mind the need to return its members to whatever conflict they have at hand, or perhaps have in mind – something Google AI pointed out to me, and which it refers to as “maintaining force readiness”. What kind of a therapeutic climate this creates is hard to tell, but I doubt it would be much conducive to the popular notions of wellbeing or flourishing. It brings to mind words like “compartmentalising” (again, thanks to AI).

As institutions, both the military and psychiatry hold inherent ethical problems and contradictions. The violence perpetrated by Hasan is an extreme case, tragic in its consequences, but it is not an isolated one. This page outlines the cases of former military service members on death row, raising the question of how their experiences may have contributed to their offending. Again, there is the question of what happens next. Again, I do not believe the death penalty will really help anyone or anything move forward or onwards. Live-streaming an execution is sick. Where that footage might end up, in whose hands it might fall – or play into—and the potential consequences of publicising extreme violence in that way are also worth considering.

As a final thought, I think it would be interesting to ask the individuals at the centre of these two very different cases what they see as the best means to atone for their actions, supposing that is something they are interested in.