28 years of solitary confinement sounds needlessly cruel even for someone convicted of a terrible crime, however, it was arguably justified by her actions in prison. She tried to kill another inmate, for which she was convicted, and later, she tried to escape.

There is a man in Japan who was on Japanese death row for like 60 years. If you’re not aware, on Japanese death row, you’re in near complete isolation. This guy was in solitary for around six decades. AND HE WAS INNOCENT

Edit: also, Japanese death row doesn’t work the same as American and others’ death rows. They don’t tell Japanese death row inmates when they’ll be executed until less than an hour before they are to be executed. So this man spent 60 YEARS not knowing if the day he woke up is the day he died.

Those darn appeals and trying to make sure someone is ACTUALY guilty before murdering them!

Its very unamerican, but its possible to acknowledge that someone has done something awful, is an awful person, and deserves to die, while simultaneously acknowledging that how we treat the worst among us shapes our humanity and our society.

The penal system should be about minimising harm to the public, and rehabilitating the perp to whatever extent possible.

Its fine to conclude that someone is irredeemable, but they're still entitled to a lifetime of support to be their best self even if that's in prison.

American culture is heavily focused on tit for tat transactions. Did bad murder = gets dead. She might deserve death but we are all lessened by giving it to her.

if you punish mental illness, then society itself is sick.

She was also repeatedly raped as a child. Sometimes you need to understand what lead a person to their crimes. If you can't see past the reality of the perpetrator, and only care about obsessing over the most brutal parts of the crime instead of Pike's lifetime of suffering, then your opinion isn't related to justice, just revenge.

We are not talking about most people though.