The debate in the United States about the death penalty has led us this week to learn the story of Christa Pike, a woman who miraculously survived 2 lethal injections of pentobarbital in Tennessee.
Pike, convicted of murdering a 19-year-old classmate at a Knoxville vocational training center, was going to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 2 decades, and it was not to be. But this twist in the script has not prevented the executions in the United States from continuing, with even Donald Trump announcing a new one: that of the former military psychiatrist – Nidal Malik Hasan – sentenced to capital punishment for murdering 13 people in 2009 and injuring 32 others at the Fort Hood facilities, Texas. His execution will be broadcast live.
It is the first military execution by firing squad since World War II and will be broadcast live
Beatriz Martos, head of the death penalty at Amnesty International Spain, describes these executions as an “extreme display of cruelty” and assures that Pike’s case is yet another demonstration that “there is no humane way in which the state can kill a person, much less in the name of justice.” “We firmly oppose the death penalty because we consider it inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment, which violates the right to life and the right to health, and which affects both prisoners and their families,” adds Martos.
The UN denounces the streaming execution of Hasan as “torture”
Nidal Malik Hasan will be executed on December 3 in the same place where he carried out the massacre shouting “Allah is great” and in the facilities of Fort Hood (Texas). Now after 17 years on death row, the execution will be carried out by firing squad, something that has not happened since 1961, since World War II.
In the last 50 years a total of 1,682 people have been executed in the United States
It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 people waiting on death row in the 27 of the 50 United States states where the death penalty remains in effect. Of course, in practice the map is smaller, since only 21 can carry out executions because the other 6 maintain moratoriums. Since 1976, up to 1,682 people have been executed in the country by different methods (including lethal injection or the electric chair), and more than a third have been executed in the state of Texas. In the 23 remaining states and Washington this practice is abolished. And seven states took the step between 2011 and 2021: Washington, New Hampshire, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and Colorado.
