Shut Yer' Feckless, Hypocritical Yap, TN Gov. Bill Lee. Damnation.

So -- yes, her victim remains dead -- and she was a certainly very bad person, with her 17 year old boyfriend, 30 years ago. But he got life without parole. She was sentenced to. . . die. And no, I cannot just let this. . . go.

Ms. Pike's fate though, in all likelihood is now far worse than death, outright. She's likely going to linger for months or years, in a limbo -- vaguely between life and death -- paralyzed from the neck down, a brain trapped in an essentially dead body.

If that is not "cruel punishment" (for someone who barely passes the IQ test, to be eligible for death -- who was so sentenced at the young age of 18 after years of horrific sexual abuse, as a child). . . I cannot imagine what is.

Here's the NYT update as of mid-morning -- East Coast time:

. . .Gov. Bill Lee paused capital punishment in Tennessee on Thursday and called for a review of the state’s policies on how it puts people to death. The announcement came hours after Christa Pike, a death row inmate, survived two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital in the state’s second botched execution this year.

Ms. Pike, 50, was hospitalized late Wednesday night when she remained conscious after the injections. It was not immediately clear Thursday morning what her condition was, or what had gone wrong.

“It is deeply disturbing to me” that the execution was botched Gov. Lee (R/MAGA) said. [Ed. Note: Of course, yesterday he personally chose not to give her a short reprieve -- to have her habeas claims adjudicated -- nor to consider her firing squad request. We do know she'd be dead now -- if he had listened, as she wanted.] Lee said the pause he imposed includes Ms. Pike’s case.

The pause will also delay an execution that had been scheduled for December for a man convicted of murdering a friend. This year, Mr. Lee issued a reprieve for another death-row inmate whose execution had been canceled after medical staff members failed to find a vein. . . .

We must do better than these stabs a backward-thinking, bluntly-cruel and divisive. . . politicking. Mr. Lee in particular -- and the five Justices who did not stop her execution -- despite her habeas claim not having been fully-exhausted. Alternatively, we should have let her have her dying wish -- to be an example of our barbarism -- by firing squad. Maybe then more people might. . . wake up. These are nightmare scenarios -- over and over, again.

नमस्ते