Tennessee to execute woman for first time in more than 200 years after governor denies clemency

Highlights

• Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christa Pike on Wednesday
• Governor Bill Lee rejected her clemency request on Monday
• Her lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to stay the execution

Tennessee is set to execute Christa Pike tomorrow (30 September) after Governor Bill Lee denied her request for clemency on Monday, a move that would make her the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at Knoxville Job Corps, in 1995. Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1996, becoming the youngest woman to be put on death row in modern US history, according to The Guardian.

The case drew widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of those involved and the carving of a satanic symbol into Slemmer's body.

Pike has never denied her role in the killing. Her lawyers have since highlighted her history of severe childhood abuse, sexual violence and mental health problems, including bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Governor denies clemency

As the execution date approached, civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International called for Lee to remove Pike from death row.

But Lee declined to intervene.

"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," he said in a statement.

Pike's lawyers said they were "deeply saddened and heartbroken" by the decision, arguing that decades of research on adolescent brain development should be considered when assessing the responsibility of an 18-year-old, particularly one who had experienced severe trauma.

"Throughout her childhood, Christa was failed by people and institutions that should have shown her care and meaningful intervention," her lawyers said in a statement.

They added that Pike, who is now 50, is remorseful, receives treatment for her mental illness and provides support and guidance to other incarcerated women.

Lawyers challenge death sentence

Pike's attorneys have asked the US Supreme Court to stay the execution.

Assistant federal defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused from toddlerhood and was raped at the ages of 11 and 17. He said her lawyers at the penalty phase of her trial failed to present the jury with what he described as critical information about her childhood and did not argue that her age should be considered.

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

"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise 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," Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition.

Ferrell said more is now known about adolescent brain development and described Pike's death sentence as an outlier.

He also pointed to the sentence received by Shipp, who was 17 when the crime was committed. Shipp received life in prison with the possibility of parole because of his age and was denied parole last year. A third teenager who admitted to being an accessory received probation.

Victim's family

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, told the Associated Press that 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."

Rare executions of women

The last recorded execution of a woman in Tennessee was in 1820, when Martin Eve was hanged after being charged as an accessory to murder, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Female executions are rare in the United States. Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023 for a 2003 killing. McLaughlin, a transgender woman, was believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the country.

The US federal government executed Lisa Montgomery in 2021, the first time in nearly seven decades that the federal government had put a female inmate to death. Georgia executed a woman in 2015.