Neither were on display last week when the State of Tennessee sought to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder, a particularly brutal slaying, of Colleen Slemmer, 19. Pike was 18, and the two were classmates at Knoxville job-training facility.
Witnesses reported that Pike remained alive and continued breathing and snoring for a considerable period after the second dose.
Had the execution been successful, it would have been Tennessee’s first for a female in 200 years.
Pike has not regained consciousness, her attorney says. She remains hospitalized under armed guard, and doctors have been treating the effects of the pentobarbital administered during the execution attempt and working to clear the drug from her system.
“We can't allow what we saw the other day to be the norm because that is an inversion of how capital punishment should be practiced,” David Closson, director for the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, said on “Washington Watch” Friday.
But capital punishment should be practiced, Closson told show host Jody Hice.
The death penalty is actually grounded in dignity for human life, Closson said.
He cited Genesis 9 and Romans 13 to support his conclusions.
“For the one in authority is God’s servant for good, but if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason,” Paul writes. “They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment to the wrongdoer.”
In Genesis 9, God, speaking to Noah and his sons he will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind,” verse six says.
“This is the most important verse in the conversation,” Closson said.
Civil government has the authority, indeed the instruction, to punish evil and in the most serious cases impose death, but Christians should be troubled when that authority is wielded haphazardly.
“If the state exercises the sword, it must do so competently and justly,” Closson said.
Many who oppose the death penalty also embrace the idea of killing the unborn under the banner of “reproductive rights.”
It’s no contradiction for pro-life Christians to support capital punishment, Closson said.
“Unborn children are innocent human beings who deserve the full protection of our laws. Genesis 9 invokes the same doctrine to explain the seriousness of murder you can glean from the scripture that murder can warrant the most severe punishment, not because human life is cheap, but because human life is so extraordinarily valuable.”
The cases have similarities but also striking differences.
“The unborn child and the convicted murderer, they both possess inherent dignity and value, but they do not stand in the same relationship to justice,” Closson said. “Some crimes must reflect the seriousness of what was actually done.”
