What happened to Christa Pike in a Tennessee prison late last month was much more than just a “botched execution.”
It was — and, if she is still alive when this is published, remains — an act of unspeakable torture.
And it focuses national attention on a question that should always remain before us, whether capital punishment is something that has any place in a civilized society.
It doesn’t.
The Utah Legislature last seriously considered the issue in 2022, when then-Rep. Lowry Snow and Sen. Dan McCay sponsored a bill to end the death penalty in the state. They argued, rightly, that capital punishment is too prone to serious error and, as public attention is drawn to ongoing legal battles, may only increase the anguish for the loved ones of those murdered.
The bill didn’t get out of committee.
It is unlikely that the Republican supermajority of the Legislature will consider the matter again any time soon. But the issue should always weigh on the conscience of our lawmakers, and the rest of us.
The Tennessee case is an extreme one. Pike was 18 when she and two others murdered a classmate. Now 50, she was to die by lethal injection Sept. 30. After two attempts, she remained alive. After several days, she woke up in a hospital bed, unable to swallow, with swollen limbs and likely brain damage.
It is an experience no government should inflict on anyone, no matter what crime they have been convicted of.
Far less gruesome, but still of great concern, is the case of Douglas Stewart Carter. He walked out of a Utah jail late last month, 41 years after he was sentenced to death for a crime that, as more evidence unfolds, he may not have committed.
There are not very many executions in Utah, and only three prisoners remain on our death row. Those sent there are about as likely to die of old age as execution. There is little reason to believe that ending the death penalty would harm anyone.
If Utah will not join the majority of the civilized world in abolishing the death penalty, it must maintain its relatively open process of conducting capital cases and do everything humanly possible to be sure no innocent person is sent to their death at our hands. Or by torture.
And, as dreadful as it may be to consider, all Utahns must always be aware of, and responsible for, what the state does in our name.
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.