Guest Post By Deroy Murdock

Fists full of hair are getting yanked from coast to coast, as Weepy Americans cry, cry, cry over the botched execution of Christa Pike, age 50.

What a mess!

Authorities tried twice to apply the capital punishment that Tennessee imposed upon Pike in 1996, after her first-degree murder conviction. Both times, Pentobarbital, the drug designed to stop her breathing, failed to deliver.

“Executions are legalized lynching,” one placard complained outside the Volunteer State’s Capitol. The Guardian sobbed: “This is the essence of cruelty.”

For true cruelty, consider how Pike treated Colleen Slemmer, then 19. According to Tennessee’s US Supreme Court appeal, Pike thought Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. So, Pike lured Slemmer into the woods in January 1995, slashed her throat with a box cutter, slammed a meat cleaver into her back, crushed her head with a chunk of asphalt, and kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir.

Pike told a friend that she “just felt mean that day.” State officials say that Pike “danced, smiled, and sang while she recounted these details.”

Those who whimper over Pike rarely whisper Slemmer’s name.

For my part, I love the death penalty! Like Pike, some criminals are so vile, heinous, and disgusting that they relinquish their right to life. The inherent human dignity with which murderers are born vanishes when they plunge knives and pump slugs into their prey.

These worthless perpetrators deserve to die. This involves deterrence (execution headlines should discourage deadly mayhem) and the superlative social sanction against behavior so abominable that the guilty should be expelled from Earth. Thus, America should see lots more executions.

Despite my enthusiasm for capital punishment, lethal injections give me the shakes.

It is downright creepy to deploy syringes, intravenous lines, and stethoscopes to extinguish lives. Fatal injections abuse medicine to violate the short-form Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” The fact that doctors employ alcohol swabs to disinfect the arms of Death Row inmates before administering poisons confirms the chilling paradox at play here.

This ultimate government intervention is beyond macabre. It’s just too much.

Other execution methods terminate the wicked without bringing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” to life, in the worst way.

Death penalty opponents have cheered as shortages of fatal shots have provided a stealth excuse to stymie capital punishment. Those who denounce the death penalty should persuade legislatures to prohibit it, rather than use a paucity of such substances to evacuate Death Row.

So, let’s expand the executioners’ options. Restore the gas chambers. Rebuild the gallows. Roll out the firing squads. Plug in the electric chairs. Gassing, hanging, shooting, and frying Death Row prisoners get the job done, minus the performative hygiene of lethal injections.

This idea should make capital punishment more palatable, for those whom it makes nervous: Execution Choice.

Death Row inmates should be free to choose how they die. While officials should not encourage lethal injection, for the condemned who insist, let ’em have it.

Pike has recovered, miraculously, from her close brush with death. On Saturday, her attorneys announced her release from an unnamed Nashville hospital and return to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the former Tennessee Prison for Women, where Pike has been parked since March 30, 1996. Presumably, she will wait there for a second date with the Grim Reaper.

So, when that glorious day comes, the warden should hand Pike a menu​ and tell her to pick one: A third syringe of Pentobarbital, hydrogen cyanide gas, a noose, several bullets, or 2,000 volts.

Meanwhile, President Donald J. Trump announced that Fort Hood, Texas, shooter Nidal Malik Hasan would be dispatched by firing squad on December 3, the earliest date allowed under a statutorily required, 60-day waiting period. The execution will be televised.

Hooray!

On November 9, 2009, this Islamo-cockroach yelled, “Allahu Akbar!” and then opened fire inside a US Army pre-deployment center. Hasan wounded 32 and murdered 13 (one civilian and 12 GIs). He has earned death and a quick descent into the hottest corner of Hell. This should have happened in 2010.

Those who now bellow about Hasan’s execution being streamed on video should stop crying for him and, instead, shed tears for his 45 victims, not least U.S. Army Private Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago. She had returned from military service in Iraq and looked forward to maternity leave. Three months into her first pregnancy, Hasan shot Velez. She screamed, “My baby! My baby!” before dropping dead. Hasan also murdered Velez’s unborn child, who never escaped its mother’s womb.

Those who cower at the thought of seeing Hasan take the bullets in the heart that he so richly earned are free to tune out. Instead, they can watch Jeopardy, a Hallmark Yuletide special, or click off their TVs and dream of a white Christmas. Hasan’s carcass will make December, indeed, the most wonderful time of the year.

As for the notion that scenes of Hasan’s execution will inspire jihadists, please watch today’s news coverage from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s now-closed King Khalid International Airport. Bloodthirsty Islamofascist Houthi terrorists fired drones and missiles from Yemen on Saturday and blasted that facility to bits. They killed 13 individuals, including an unidentified American, and wounded a stunning 309 innocents.

These terrorist scum did not need an execution video to motivate them. Whether or not Nidal Malik Hasan’s death by firing squad is conducted in secret or presented in IMAX, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and their fellow vermin will kill until they are killed.

So: Lights, camera, ready, aim, fire!

Update!

President Trump announced that Hasan’s execution will not be televised.

Trump wrote on Truth Social:

“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.”

Trump’s sentiments echo those I expressed above: Visuals of Hasan’s execution could deter terrorism, and some people would prefer not to see such images. So, they need not watch.

On December 2, Trump should reverse today’s unfortunate bow to America’s weak sisters. He should restore the live stream of Hasan’s death by firing squad. And he should instruct the White House to offer a simultaneous video that names and honors the 32 American patriots whom Hasan shot and the 13 he murdered. This would be the prefect way to purge Hasan from this planet, let those who wish to watch do so, and pay tribute to those whom Hasan stole from their families, friends, and fellow Americans.

Next: September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohamed. American taxpayers have bought this leech breakfast, lunch, and dinner since September 2006, when he checked into Guantanamo.

No one disputes KSM’s guilt. He confessed: “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z.”

Trump should order KSM’s execution.

Shoot this rotten bastard tonight!

​Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.