Tennessee Set To Execute Woman For First Time In 200 Years

Tennessee is set to execute Christa Pike, 50, on Wednesday, in what would be the state’s first execution of a woman in about 200 years.

Pike, who was 18 when she killed her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995, became one of the youngest women in the United States to be sentenced to death.

She and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted over Slemmer’s killing at the Knoxville Job Corps, where the three were classmates.

Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area, where she and Shipp tortured and killed her.

The case attracted widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of those involved and the fact that a satanic symbol was carved into Slemmer’s body.

Pike has never denied her involvement in the killing. However, her lawyers and supporters have argued that her death sentence should be reconsidered because she was a teenager with untreated mental illness who had suffered severe sexual abuse and neglect during her childhood.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced on Monday that he would not grant Pike clemency.

Her attorneys have subsequently asked the United States Supreme Court to halt the execution. They say she experienced an exceptionally traumatic and abusive childhood.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused from toddlerhood and was raped at ages 11 and 17.

He argued that her trial lawyers failed to present the jury with critical information about her background during the penalty phase of the trial and did not adequately argue that her age should be considered.

Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to her account to police, she initially intended only to fight Slemmer but the confrontation escalated into a frenzied attack that resulted in her death.

In a clemency petition, Pike’s lawyers argued that her untreated mental illness and traumatic background left her unable to “put the brakes on.”

In a statement included in the petition, Pike said: “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”

Ferrell said developments in the understanding of adolescent brain development showed that Pike’s case was unusual.

He also pointed to the sentence handed to Shipp, who was 17 when the crime was committed. Shipp received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole because of his age, although he was denied parole last year.

A third teenager who admitted to being an accessory to the killing received probation.

Ferrell said other people sentenced to death in Tennessee for crimes committed at age 18 have had their sentences reduced.

The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people nationwide have been executed for crimes committed at ages 18, 19 or 20 during the modern death penalty era.

However, death sentences for people in that age group have become increasingly rare.

“If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has opposed efforts to stop Pike’s execution and said she has waited decades for her daughter’s killer to face the sentence.

Speaking by telephone from Florida, Martinez said Slemmer’s young age remained particularly painful for her.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez said.

Martinez said her daughter volunteered with the Special Olympics, loved roller skating and wanted to pursue a career in computers.

“She was easygoing. She was a computer geek to begin with. She and my husband would build and tear apart the computers constantly,” Martinez said. “She trusted everybody, and that was her downfall.”

She recalled that Slemmer called her from Job Corps on the night of the murder, but the call was interrupted because of poor reception. By the time Martinez returned the call, her daughter had already gone out.

“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said.

The killing shocked Knoxville and became associated with the “satanic panic” that gripped parts of the United States during the 1980s and 1990s.

Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt.

Shipp later admitted that he carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into Slemmer’s body.

If the execution goes ahead as scheduled, Pike would become the first woman executed by Tennessee since 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Executions of women are also rare across the United States.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed nationwide, accounting for about one per cent of all executions, according to the centre.

Pike’s case is now before the US Supreme Court as her attorneys seek a stay of execution.