Christa Pike was 18 when she killed a classmate in a fit of jealousy, becoming one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the U.S. Now 50, she is scheduled to be executed Wednesday in what would be the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in 200 years.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their Knoxville Job Corps classmate. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a rival for her boyfriend and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed her. The case received widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim's body.
Pike does not deny her guilt, but her lawyers and supporters argue that a death penalty is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teenager with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer's mother requested that lethal injection be carried out, saying she has waited decades to see Pike's sentence carried out.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced Monday that he would not grant clemency. Pike's lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution.
Pike's lawyers said she experienced an extremely traumatic and abusive childhood. Assistant Federal Public Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused as a baby and raped between the ages of 11 and 17. He said Pike's lawyers at the sentencing phase of her trial failed to present the jury with what he called critical information about her past, nor did they argue that her age should be taken into consideration.
Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Pike told police that she initially just wanted to fight Slemmer, but ended up killing him in a frenzied attack. In her clemency petition, Pike's lawyers said that her untreated mental illness and past made her unable to "put the brakes on."
"I was an 18-year-old with mental health issues. It took me many years to understand the significance of what I had done. Even longer to accept how many lives I had touched. I took the life of someone's child, their sister, their friend. I regret now thinking that I had the capacity to commit such a crime," Pike said in a statement included in her pardon petition.
The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people nationwide have been executed for crimes they committed when they were 18, 19 or 20 years old in the modern era of capital punishment, but death sentences for those in that age group have become increasingly rare. Florida is among the states that carry out the most executions in the U.S., even as the use of the death penalty and public support for it have declined nationwide.
In 2023, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman, for a 2003 murder, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly 7 decades that the U.S. government has sentenced a prisoner to death. Georgia executed a woman in 2015. ©LAPSI.al
