Christa Pike is set to be the first woman executed in the state of Tennessee in over 200 years for her involvement in the murder of a 19-year-old in 1995.
Her lawyers and loved ones, however, say that if she committed the same crime today, she would not be on death row.
If her execution goes through, she will be the first woman since 1819 to be put to death in Tennessee.
Notably, only 17 women have been executed in the US since the 1970s, whereas 1,663 men have been put to death under the death penalty, the BBC reported.
The murder case of Colleen Slemmer
Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, whom the pair met at a job camp for troubled teenagers.
Slemmer’s body was found on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus in Knoxville with a pentagram carved into her chest and her head bludgeoned.
Court records showed that Pike and Shipp, along with their friend, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to a remote part of the campus before torturing her and beating her to death.
Pike reportedly took a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir.
Pike was sentenced to death for the murder, but Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Pike has a history of childhood sexual abuse and neglect that her lawyers claim were not considered in the initial sentencing, the BBC reported on Saturday.
"It is mind-boggling that they did not present any of her history of abuse and rape, even though they knew about it," Sandra Babcock, a lawyer who worked on Pike’s defense and an expert in gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School, told the BBC.
"Her case is so uniquely compelling, not just because of her really incomprehensible history of sexual violence but the combination of that with her youth and her mental illness."
Christa Pike's childhood sexual assaults, abuse
Since the sentencing, Pike’s defense uncovered proof that she was sexually and physically abused by her mother’s boyfriends and husbands throughout her teenage years. In 1995, forensic psychologist Dr. Diana McCoy, who was hired by Pike’s team, found that Pike was raped when she was 11 and 17 by two of them. She was also repeatedly raped by her grandmother’s boyfriend when she was a toddler.
Her aunt testified in court that her mother routinely let her crawl through filthy, dog-feces-littered floors. Court documents showed that Pike attempted suicide when she was 12 years old.
She was later diagnosed with manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder, in 2021.
Pike’s lawyer during the trial did not call McCoy to testify or call any of the witnesses she recommended, the BBC reported. Her findings about Pike’s background came to light over 10 years later during a review of her case. A new team of lawyers argued that Pike received ineffective assistance of counsel, which the judge denied.
“If someone would have stepped in at age 5, if someone would have stepped in at age 7, if someone would have stepped in at age 11, if anyone would have done anything to help me, to get me psychological help or anything, maybe something would have been different,” Pike said in a recent documentary about her case, Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee.
She also said in the documentary that she regretted her actions and felt remorse.
“I’ve always felt bad for her mother, that I took someone’s child, someone’s sister, someone’s friend away,” Pike said in the documentary. “I feel remarkably remorseful for what I did.”
Still, her victim’s mother, May Martinez, says she thinks that Pike should suffer for her actions.
"She did the crime. I think she should pay for it," she told Knoxville station WBIR in 2021.
"I would feel better that she felt the same pain that Colleen did. My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can't no more, and I want this to happen before I die," she added.
"There's not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting."
She told the BBC that she stands by the statements.
Her attorneys are now asking Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole, and have sought relief from the state’s Supreme Court as well as the federal court.
On Tuesday, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Pike’s lawyers' challenge that lethal injection would be considered cruel and unusual punishment for Pike, who has thrombocytosis, a bone marrow disorder characterized by an overproduction of blood platelets. Medical experts on the case argued that her condition would cause her to essentially drown in her own blood during her execution, Nashville’s WTVF reported.
Teen killer Christa Pike to be executed on Wednesday
Because of her trauma, Pike has requested an all-female team for her execution. She said that being held down by a team of men will exacerbate her trauma. The state has not guaranteed her request, but said that a team of female guards will transfer her to the prison where she will be executed.
On her execution day, Pike has requested an all-female team. She says being held down by a group of men will exacerbate her trauma. The state of Tennessee has said the goal is that female guards will transfer Pike to the prison where she will be executed but hasn't guaranteed it.
"If they let her be executed, then what it tells us is that the death penalty in this country is just a joke,” Babcock told the BBC.
“It's not for the worst of the worst. It is for the people who receive the worst legal representation and who are the most damaged and vulnerable,” Babcock said.