Christa Pike Failed Execution: Sentiment Analysis
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We collected 200 top level comments (no replies) from three reddit threads, and hand classified each comment into one of three classes of attitude towards Christa Pike. While positive attitude means sympathy toward her and opposed to execution, negative attitude means hostility and support for execution, and neutral means a reaction with no position.
Key Takeaways
- Opinion was split, not settled. No side clearly led, so the failed execution didn’t push these commenters toward one view.
- Many commenters took no side. About a third only reacted, so the event drew more reaction than argument.
- Among those who did take a side, the lean was slight. Negative comments outnumbered positive ones, but not by enough to call it a clear preference.
Context
Christa Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was 18 at the time and prosecutors said she acted out of jealousy over her boyfriend. She was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
On September 30, Tennessee tried to execute her by lethal injection, the state’s first attempt to put a woman to death in two centuries. The attempt failed. Witnesses and journalists described about 2½ hours of disarray and prolonged distress as staff struggled to give two doses of pentobarbital. She was unconscious for several days, then regained consciousness and has since been moved back to prison..
Her attorneys are asking Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison. The state says it followed its execution protocol and is investigating what went wrong.