Christa Pike has spent nearly 30 years waiting to be executed for a brutal murder she committed at 18. Now, with her death scheduled for Sept. 30, her lawyers have made one deeply personal request about the people who will be in the room when she dies.
On March 30, 1996, Christa Pike, only 20 at the time, stood before a Tennessee judge and cried quietly as she waited to learn her fate.
“It is ordered that you shall be put to death by execution as prescribed by law,” the judge told her.
At the time, Tennessee used the electric chair, and the judge continued by telling Pike she would be “subjected to shock by sufficient current of electricity that you shall die.”
“May God have mercy upon you,” the judge added.
As Pike’s crying intensified, she turned toward her mother sitting behind her in the courtroom and pleaded for one final moment together.
“Can I please hug my mom before I go,” she begged. “Please, just let me have a hug. I love you.”
She was taken away and never had the chance to hug her mom.
Nearly three decades later, Pike is 50 and Tennessee’s only female death-row prisoner, with her execution by lethal injection scheduled for 10 a.m. on Sept. 30.
Murdered at 19
Pike was just 18 when she committed the crime that put her there.
On Jan. 12, 1995, Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, attacked 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer after luring her to a secluded area near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus in Knoxville.
The teenagers knew each other through the Knoxville Job Corps, where Pike had become convinced that Slemmer was interested in Shipp, according to USA Today.
Slemmer was beaten, cut and killed during a prolonged attack, while another teenager, Shadolla Peterson, was also present. Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, and Pike kept a piece of her victim’s skull as a souvenir, later showing it to students.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, making her the youngest woman sent to Tennessee’s death row.
Shipp, who was 17 when Slemmer was killed and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, received a life sentence. Peterson testified against the pair and received probation.
If Pike’s execution proceeds, she will become the first woman Tennessee has put to death in more than 200 years. She would also be the only person executed by the state in the modern death-penalty era for a crime committed at 18, 19 or 20.
Yet as the date approaches, Pike’s lawyers are asking to replace her death sentence with life in prison without parole, arguing that the jury responsible for deciding whether she should live or die never heard crucial evidence about the childhood that preceded her crime.
Years of abuse
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), sexual abuse started when she was about 5 years old and continued at different points throughout her childhood.
At 11, she was raped by a neighbor, who “was not given prison time and moved back into his home, just a minute down the block,” leaving the child “to walk by his house every day to get to school.”
And then, at 17, almost exactly one year before Slemmer’s murder, Pike was attacked and raped by a stranger while walking to a store.
Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, conditions her attorneys say went undiagnosed at the time of her trial.
“None of the rapes, none of the sexual abuse as a child, were introduced,” clemency lawyer Kelleigh Gleason told the Guardian. “Trial counsel were aware of most of that – it was documented by law enforcement – but they chose not to use it.”
Her legal team has also challenged Tennessee’s lethal-injection protocol, arguing that Pike’s medical conditions create an increased risk of complications and that the circumstances surrounding the execution could severely retraumatize her.
For Pike, those concerns have led to one final request.
Request for women in death chamber
If attempts to stop the execution fail, Pike’s lawyers have asked Tennessee to ensure that only female corrections officers are present in the death chamber, the Guardian reports.
The request is directly connected to her history of sexual violence at the hands of men and the fear that being restrained while staff prepare her body for lethal injection could force her to relive that trauma in her final moments.
Tennessee has not guaranteed that her request will be granted.
It leaves Pike facing the terrifying possibility that male corrections officers could be involved as she is restrained and prepared for the lethal injection that will end her life.
For now, that decision remains unresolved, while the execution that Pike first heard a judge pronounce nearly 30 years ago continues to move closer.
“What awaits [Ms. Pike] is not only death…It is, for Christa, a form of dying that is uniquely and needlessly cruel. And it is avoidable,” trauma expert Dr. Bethany Brand, who examined Pike, told DPIC.
Do you think Pike’s fears of reliving the abuse she suffered as a child be considered in her final moments? Please let us know your thoughts and then pass this story along so we can hear from others.
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