Christa Pike set to become first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years

Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on 30 September for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Her lawyers cite severe childhood abuse and mental illness in a last-minute clemency push.

Tennessee death row: Christa Pike faces execution as clemency bid falters

Christa Pike texted a close friend from her death row cell earlier this week, asking that none of her loved ones be present at her execution on Wednesday. "She doesn't want us to experience that," Ashlee Sellars, one of Pike's friends, told bbc.com.

Pike, now 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the hands of the state of Tennessee on 30 September. If carried out, she will be the first woman put to death in the state in more than 200 years. Across the United States, only 18 women have been executed since the 1970s, compared to 1,663 men.

The case centres on the murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old killed in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1995. Pike was 18 at the time. She and her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Slemmer — a fellow resident at a job training camp for low-income young people. Colleen's body was found with an inverted pentagram carved into her chest, a detail that generated intense media coverage in Knoxville at the time.

Pike had accused Slemmer of insulting her and attempting to steal her boyfriend. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had boasted about the killing before and after it took place, and showed them a fragment of Slemmer's skull.

In 1996, Pike was sentenced to death. Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the murder, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Clemency petition and last-minute appeals

Pike's legal team filed a 226-page clemency petition and continues to seek a last-minute reprieve. UN human rights experts have also called for the execution to be halted. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee holds the power to grant clemency, though he has never done so in a death penalty case and a decision is not expected until the final hours.

The Tennessee Supreme Court this week denied Pike's request to halt the execution. Her lawyers say they are still considering next steps.

A history of abuse the jury never heard

Central to Pike's defence is the argument that the jury at her original trial was never given a full picture of her childhood. Pike has a documented history of sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect spanning from early childhood.

A forensic psychologist, Dr Diana McCoy, was engaged by the defence in 1995 and found Pike had been severely neglected by both parents. McCoy's report documented physical and sexual abuse by several of her mother's husbands and boyfriends, including a rape at the age of 11 and another at 17. It was later established that she had been repeatedly raped as a toddler by her grandmother's boyfriend. Pike's mother reportedly did not believe her when she disclosed these attacks.

Despite McCoy's findings, Pike's trial lawyer did not call her as a witness, nor did he call the other witnesses she had recommended. These details came to light more than a decade later during a review hearing, when a new legal team argued ineffective assistance of counsel — a claim the judge ultimately rejected.

In 2021, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has been medicated since. A further assessment in 2023 by forensic psychologist Dr Bethany Brand concluded that Pike's case was "extremely rare" given the extent of abuse she had suffered from people who should have protected her.

"Her childhood was replete with physical, sexual and emotional abuse. She was sexually violated by a number of men, starting before she was school age," Brand said. She added that untreated manic episodes and untreated PTSD "absolutely influenced how threatened she felt by the girl she ended up killing and her lack of emotional control in that situation."

Sandra Babcock, an expert in gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School who has worked on Pike's defence, described the original trial's failure to present the abuse history as "mind-boggling."

"Her case is so uniquely compelling, not just because of her really incomprehensible history of sexual violence but the combination of that with her youth and her mental illness," Babcock said. She added: "If they let her be executed, then what it tells us is that the death penalty in this country is just a joke. It's not for the worst of the worst. It is for the people who receive the worst legal representation and who are the most damaged and vulnerable."

A federal appeals court ruled earlier that the jury had already received information about Pike's difficult upbringing through testimony from her mother, father and aunt. The court found that new evidence of bipolar disorder, PTSD and brain damage "mostly repeated" what the jury had already heard and would not have altered the verdict.

Last year, Tennessee's Supreme Court ruled that Pike had not demonstrated circumstances sufficient to justify commuting her sentence, exhausting her appeals at that level.

Victim's mother calls for justice to be carried out

Colleen Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, supports the execution. "She did the crime. I think she should pay for it," Martinez told Knoxville television station WBIR. Martinez has also said she wants the execution to proceed so that her daughter "finally can be resting."

Parallels with the Lisa Montgomery case

Pike's situation has drawn comparisons to the case of Lisa Montgomery, whose defence team similarly argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who deserved mercy. Montgomery's appeals failed and she was executed by lethal injection in Indiana in January 2021.

Execution day requests

Pike has asked that an all-female team carry out her execution, stating that being restrained by male guards would worsen her trauma. The state of Tennessee has indicated it aims to use female guards for the transfer to the execution facility, but has stopped short of offering a guarantee.

Sellars, who describes the Pike she has come to know as "kind and protective," says she finds it difficult to reconcile that image with the crime committed 31 years ago. Pike has asked that none of her friends or family witness what happens on Wednesday.

Source: The Sun