Dubai: Tennessee is preparing to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years, bringing to a close a case that has pitted arguments about youth, childhood abuse and mental illness against a mother’s three-decade wait to see her daughter’s killer put to death.
Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 1995 killing of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was just 18 when the crime was committed and has spent more than three decades on death row.
With her execution approaching, Pike told NBC News in a letter that she was prepared to die.
“I am not afraid to die,” she wrote, adding that she was “only nervous about the process”. She also said that regardless of whether she received clemency, “I am at peace”.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced on Monday that he would not grant clemency, saying he was allowing the death sentence to stand “after deliberate consideration”. Pike’s lawyers have turned to the US Supreme Court in a final attempt to halt the execution.
A rare execution
1995: Christa Pike, then 18, takes part in the killing of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
1996: Pike is convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death.
30 years: She has spent more than three decades on Tennessee’s death row.
200+ years: Tennessee has not executed a woman since 1820.
18 women: Number of women executed across the US since the modern death-penalty era began in 1976 — about 1% of all executions. AP News
Wednesday: Pike, now 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after Governor Bill Lee declined to grant clemency. Her lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to intervene.
Pike does not dispute her role in Slemmer’s killing.
Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee with two other teenagers. Slemmer was tortured and killed, and a pentagram was carved into her body. The brutality of the crime and its alleged occult associations drew widespread attention.
But Pike’s lawyers argue that the jury that sentenced her to death did not hear crucial evidence about her childhood.
They say she endured years of severe sexual and physical abuse and neglect and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Her lawyers also argue that scientific understanding of adolescent brain development has advanced considerably since her trial.
Pike herself has expressed remorse.
Different sentences
“It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” she said in her clemency petition. “I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend.”
Her lawyers also point to the different sentences handed to the three teenagers involved. Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 and received a life sentence because he was a juvenile. A third teenager, Shadolla Peterson, who acted as a lookout, received probation after cooperating with prosecutors.
For Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, however, the focus remains on the daughter she lost.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen,” Martinez told AP. She said her daughter, who volunteered with the Special Olympics and hoped to work with computers, would have turned 51 this month.
Martinez told NBC News that she intends to witness the execution while holding a photograph of her daughter.
“I will sit there with her picture in my hand,” she said.
If the execution goes ahead, Pike will become the first woman executed by Tennessee since 1820.
Female executions remain exceptionally rare across the United States. Only 18 women have been executed nationwide since 1976, accounting for about one per cent of executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike’s spiritual adviser, Buddhist teacher Mikey Noechel, is expected to be in the execution chamber. He said Pike accepts responsibility for what she did but believes she has changed during her decades in prison.
In her letter, Pike said the support she had received recently had left her feeling “more love in the last two weeks than I have my entire life”.
