Tennessee is set to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday, a step that would make her the first woman put to death by the state in more than two centuries, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied what her attorneys called a last-ditch bid to halt the process. The justices' order, issued late Tuesday, followed years of appeals over Pike's age at the time of her crime and her mental health history, according to the BBC.
Pike, now 48, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student in the Knoxville Job Corps program, in 1995. Prosecutors said Pike, then 18, lured Slemmer into a wooded area on the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus and killed her after becoming convinced Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend. A co-defendant, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence and became eligible for parole last year; a second participant, Shadolla Peterson, testified against Pike and received probation, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
An Appeal Built on Youth and Trauma
Pike's attorneys have argued for years that her death sentence should be commuted because of her age, she was 18 at the time of the killing, and a childhood they describe as marked by severe abuse. In 2019, Sixth Circuit Judge Jane Stranch wrote that Pike's sentence "likely" violated the Eighth Amendment, noting she would have been ineligible for execution had she been 17, like her co-defendant, rather than 18. Advocates with Tennesseans for an Alternative to the Death Penalty gathered more than 2,500 signatures on a clemency petition, arguing that "clemency offers the opportunity to apply our updated understanding of the child Christa was and the profound consequences of what happened to her," according to WFSB.
Pike herself has expressed remorse in letters from death row. "Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager," she wrote in one 2023 letter. "It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime."
Gov. Bill Lee, who holds sole authority to grant clemency in Tennessee, had said before Tuesday's ruling that the execution would proceed as scheduled, and he did not intervene. Pike is set to be put to death by lethal injection, the state's default method.
If carried out, the execution would be Tennessee's first of a woman in more than 200 years and would end Pike's three-decade stay on the state's death row, where she has been the only woman under sentence of death. Her case is likely to renew debate over how courts weigh the age and mental state of defendants who committed capital crimes as teenagers, an issue that has divided federal courts even as the Supreme Court has declined to extend its ban on executing juveniles to those who, like Pike, were 18.
