US to execute woman for 1995 murder after S’Court rejects appeal

Headshot: Christa Pike | BBC

The United States Supreme Court has rejected a last-minute bid by death row inmate Christa Pike to halt her execution in Tennessee, clearing the way for her lethal injection on Wednesday.

Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed at 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT) at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

If the execution proceeds, Pike would become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, BBC reported Wednesday.

Pike’s lawyers had petitioned the US Supreme Court for a last-minute reprieve after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee rejected her clemency request on Monday.

Lee said he would not intervene in the execution after reviewing Pike’s request to have her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

“After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” Lee said in a statement.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers.

Slemmer’s murder drew widespread attention in Knoxville in 1995 after the teenager was found with a pentagram carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving the symbol herself.

Pike had accused Slemmer of insulting her and attempting to steal her boyfriend. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder before and after it happened and had shown them a piece of Slemmer’s skull.

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Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

Her lawyers have argued that Pike’s age at the time of the crime should have been considered in determining her sentence.

“With this decision, the State of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: an 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and 18 is too young to face execution,” her attorneys said in a statement on Monday.

Pike’s lawyers have also highlighted what they describe as a history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect, arguing that the evidence was not fully presented to the jury that sentenced her.

“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” her attorneys said. “Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.”

Pike was reportedly the youngest person on Tennessee’s death row when she entered prison at 21, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections.

Only 18 women have been executed in the United States since the 1970s, compared with 1,663 men, according to figures cited by the BBC.

Pike is due to be executed on Wednesday morning, unless a further legal intervention stops the process.