VIDEO: TENNESSEE WOMAN FACES LETHAL INJECTION DECADES AFTER 19-YEAR-OLD’S MURDER
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HotJist News
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has denied a clemency request from death row inmate Christa Pike, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old they met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers.
Pike’s attorneys have filed a petition with the US Supreme Court in a final attempt to halt the execution and secure a last-minute reprieve.
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If carried out, Pike’s execution would make her the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Since the 1970s, 18 women have been executed in the United States, compared with 1,663 men.
“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,” Governor Lee said in a statement.
Pike’s legal team submitted the clemency petition earlier this month, asking that her death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.
Her attorneys argued that carrying out the execution would place Tennessee in a unique position because Pike would be the first person executed by the state in the modern death penalty era for an offence committed at the age of 18.
Her lawyers, Stephen Ferrell, Kelly Gleason and Randy Spivey, said the governor’s decision left important questions about Tennessee’s execution procedures unanswered.
They argued that scientific research and legal developments recognise that an 18-year-old brain is still developing and that Pike was too young to face execution.
The murder of Slemmer sparked widespread media attention in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1995 after the 19-year-old was found with a pentagram carved into her chest.
Pike had accused Slemmer of insulting her and attempting to take her boyfriend. Two other residents at the training camp later testified that Pike had spoken about the murder before and after it occurred and had shown them a piece of Slemmer’s skull.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death. Her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
Pike, who was 21 when she was incarcerated, was the youngest person on Tennessee’s death row at the time, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
She is scheduled to be executed on September 30 following years of unsuccessful appeals.
Slemmer’s mother has said she wants Pike’s execution to proceed, saying she wants her daughter to finally be able to rest.
Pike’s defence team has also presented evidence of what they describe as a history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect. Her lawyers argue that if she were convicted of the same offence today, having committed it at 18, she would not receive a death sentence.
Her attorneys have described Pike as a remorseful 50-year-old who receives treatment for mental illness and supports and mentors other incarcerated women.
They also said that details about Pike’s childhood were uncovered years after her sentencing and were not presented to the jury during her original trial.
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