A Tennessee woman remains unconscious in the hospital since her failed execution on September 30. The botched attempt to end the life of death row inmate Christa Pike has captivated and confused the country. How should the state proceed? Is capital punishment ever justified?

In 1995, Pike and her boyfriend murdered classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike, who was 18 at the time of the killing, was sentenced to the death penalty in 1996. Pike and her boyfriend murdered Slemmer by luring her to an abandoned steam plant at the University of Tennessee and brutally attacking her, slashing her with a box cutter, carving a pentagram into her chest, and smashing her skull. After the killing, Pike took a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir. According to Pike’s lawyers, she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and from being molested and raped as a child. 

David Closson, who serves as director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, says that Christians must turn to God’s word for clarity when considering capital punishment. “Christians need to begin with justice and asking what justice requires and what justice demands,” he explained during a Friday appearance on “Washington Watch.” “Genesis 9:6, I think, is the most important verse in this conversation: ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image.’…Christian ethicists have argued for centuries that the death penalty ultimately is grounded actually in the dignity of human life.”

Closson continued that murder is a grave offense, since every victim of it bears the image of God. “[In] Romans 13, another crucial passage, Paul writes that government is God’s servant and does not bear the sword in vain. Paul specifically describes the government as an avenger that carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Those words are incredibly important.”

Closson clarified that these passages of Scripture give the government an authority that private and individual citizens don’t have: the authority to punish evil. “And in the most serious cases, actually impose death,” Closson said. “Christians, I believe and have for centuries, affirmed capital punishment in principle, because that’s what the Scripture teaches.”

“We can affirm it, but I also believe in the same breath that Christians can be troubled in how it’s practiced in America. What happened in Tennessee the other day is a serious failure. If the state exercises [capital punishment], it must do so competently. It must do so justly.”

Closson asserted that what happened to Pike should not become an accepted precedent. “We can’t allow what we saw the other day to be the norm because that I think is an inversion of how capital punishment should be practiced. I would just say it is important in this conversation to remember that this person committed a capital offense. And the real victim is Colleen [Slemmer] who was brutally murdered a couple of decades ago.”

Jody Hice, guest host of “Washington Watch” and a senior fellow at FRC, pointed out that some opponents of capital punishment want to emphasize the dignity of human life when it comes to executions, yet still support abortion. 

“Genesis 9 shows that there actually is no contradiction between affirming the sanctity of human life and also affirming capital punishment,” Closson said. “Every human being bears God’s image. And so, of course, that’s why Christians defend unborn children. Unborn children are innocent human beings who deserve the full protection of our law. Genesis 9 actually invokes the same doctrine to explain the seriousness of murder. … And so, in other words, I think 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.”

Closson explained that while an unborn child and a convicted murderer both possesses inherent dignity, they do not have the same standing with justice. “The unborn child is innocent, but the murderer, after due process, has run its course. They’ve been found guilty of intentionally taking innocent life. And so, as Christians, we need to retrieve, I believe, this category of retributive justice. It recognizes moral responsibility.”

Christian commentator Samuel Sey took to X after Pike’s failed execution, “The person most responsible for Christa Pike’s botched execution is God. God has given her another opportunity to repent before he summons her for judgement. That doesn’t change his demands for the death penalty. Pray that she repents and pray that her victim receives justice.”