On Sept. 30, 50 year-old Christa Pike experienced a failed execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn. Seven or more needles were inserted into her veins with such force that one was bent sideways inside a vein, causing the deadly drug to leak outside of a vein.
Some of the results of this “botched” procedure were severe chemical burns; soft tissue damage; an inability to walk or use her arms, one having a blood clot; and her inability to eat, move her legs, breathe without a ventilator or recognize that she woke up in a hospital room surrounded by medical staff. She had pneumonia from lung involvement and other physical, mental and cognitive deficiencies.
Russell G. Waldrop
Those who support a literal view of “eye for an eye” penal justice seem unaware that this also applies to execution teams who cause extreme pain and suffering to those for whom they are supposed to provide a relatively peaceful death.
That four word biblical “bullet point” is actually a three-verse, 34 word passage that reads: “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”
We can puzzle over the complexities of how, when and by whom the execution team would receive the “exact” burns, wounds and bruises they inflicted upon Pike. We must also appreciate the intense suffering they caused to her body, mind and spirit. We know such will not happen to them as it did to her, nor should it. Who could apply such injuries in exact proportions today, and we wonder how they measured it out in the eight Scriptural examples.
We also are confident the team members did not want this to happen to Christa Pike nor took any pleasure in it.
We do support, however, appropriate punishment, serious rehabilitation efforts, limited but positive freedoms in prison (like education, physical exercise, respect), and compensation for such atrocities as she and others have received.
Actually, the eye for an eye standard had the benefit of balance over the previous one where spontaneous revenge without a trial could call for “a life for an eye ” or “a hand for a tooth.”
Yet, even the more balanced “foot for foot” approach was, and still is, flawed. An offender having only one eye, hand or foot would be seriously over-punished by the loss of their only such body part while the offended would have one left.
Mistakes in the process are the ultimate flaw. There is no “re-do” for any of the eight punishments, especially “life for life” if the offender was innocent, as the national Innocence Project has often demonstrated.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports a rare tradition in botched American executions, especially in failed hangings. A few communities considered them “acts of God” and granted freedom to the survivors rather than another execution attempt. Rare as it was, we find that tradition to be consistent with Jesus’ rejection of the “eye for an eye” tradition (see Matthew 5:38-39) and its impossible demand that the offender receive the exact treatment as did the offended.
Moreover, Pike was incarcerated on Death Row for more than 30 years, followed by this excruciating attempt to kill her, and now with the lifelong medical issues of recovery, rehabilitation and re-adjustment to her prison cell.
A final biblical note about biblical capital punishment. King David ordered the murder of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, well after the Exodus “eye for an eye” penalty was given (2 Samuel 11-12). Simon Peter tried to kill Malchus, a servant of the high priest who was in the act of arresting Jesus, but he missed the top of Malchus’ head by a couple of inches, severing only an ear (John 18:10). Yet, Peter is presumed to have kept both ears for the rest of his life. No “equal punishment” for him either, just rehabilitation for his victim and a lesson from Jesus as to the proper place for his sword; and a warning that he was well on his way to “living and dying” by that sword.
Neither King David nor the Apostle Peter, men with political and religious power, received anything like what Christa Pike has endured.
Should we also wonder about American penal justice for women who already are inmates incarcerated on Death Row?
Russell G. Waldrop is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, pastoral psychotherapist and former prison chaplain.
Related:
Christa Pike back on Death Row in Tennessee
When justice becomes a spectacle | Opinion by Grady Throneberry