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Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Tennessee on 30 September, potentially becoming the first woman put to death in the state in more than 200 years, according to the BBC.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in January 1995. The two met Slemmer at a job-training camp for troubled teenagers in Knoxville.
Slemmer’s death caused widespread attention after investigators found a pentagram carved into her chest. Pike had accused her of insulting her and trying to take her boyfriend. Witnesses later testified that Pike had spoken about the killing and shown them part of Slemmer’s skull.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Lawyers cite abuse and mental illness
Pike’s defence team has submitted a 226-page clemency petition seeking to have her sentence commuted. United Nations human rights experts have also called for the execution to be halted.
Her lawyers say Pike endured severe neglect, physical and sexual abuse, abandonment and rape during childhood. They argue that the jury did not hear the full extent of her traumatic upbringing when it sentenced her to death.
A 1995 report by forensic psychologist Diana McCoy found that Pike had been abused by several of her mother’s husbands and boyfriends. The report also documented rapes when Pike was 11 and 17, as well as repeated sexual abuse during early childhood.
McCoy was not called to testify at Pike’s trial, and many witnesses she recommended were not presented. The information emerged more than a decade later during a hearing in which a new legal team argued that Pike had received ineffective assistance of counsel. A judge rejected that claim.
Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in prison in 2021 and has received medication since then. Another psychologist, Bethany Brand, assessed her in 2023 and said untreated bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder had affected Pike’s emotional control and perception of threat at the time of the killing.
Appeals and clemency efforts
The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled last year that Pike had not demonstrated circumstances sufficient to justify commuting her sentence. The court also rejected her request to halt the execution this week.
A federal appeals court previously said the jury had heard evidence about Pike’s troubled childhood from her relatives. It also found that evidence concerning bipolar disorder, PTSD and brain damage largely repeated information already presented and would not have changed the verdict.
Unless Governor Bill Lee grants clemency, Pike is due to be executed on 30 September. Lee has never granted clemency in a death-penalty case, and a decision is not expected until close to the execution date.
Pike has requested an all-female team for the execution, saying that being restrained by men would worsen her trauma. Tennessee officials have said female guards are expected to transfer her to the prison where the execution will take place, but have not guaranteed that arrangement.
Victim’s family supports execution
Colleen Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, supports Pike’s execution. She told Knoxville television station “WBIR” in 2021: “She did the crime. I think she should pay for it.” Martinez told the BBC this week that she still holds that view.
Martinez has said she wants the execution to take place so that her daughter can finally rest. The Justice Coalition, a victims’ rights organisation, has raised money to help her travel to Tennessee to attend it.
Robert Bracewell, the group’s executive director, said the sentence was imposed by a jury and reflected what Slemmer’s family wanted.
Ashlee Sellars, a friend of Pike who met her in prison, said she struggled to reconcile the crime with the person she knows as kind and protective. Pike recently told Sellars that she did not want loved ones to attend the execution because she did not want them to experience it.
Sellars, who now works on justice reform and victims’ rights after serving a 25-year sentence for involvement in a robbery-murder, said Pike was fighting for her life to have meaning as much as for the chance to survive.
