Christa Pike’s legal team and multiple outside groups want Tennessee’s governor to halt her scheduled execution.
Christa Pike has spent more than three decades on death row after being convicted for the 1995 murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer.
Pike, along with her then-boyfriend and a third friend, lured Slemmer into the woods where they beat and stabbed her to death.
Pike was 18 at the time, and her conviction made her the youngest woman in US history to receive a death sentence.
She’s now set to become the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in over 200 years. Her execution is scheduled for September 30.
Her legal team has filed for clemency with Governor Bill Lee and several outside groups have joined the effort to stop the execution from moving forward.
Pike’s childhood was full of chaos and abuse
Pike’s clemency petition lays out her childhood as one marked by repeated sexual violence, chaos and neglect.
She suffered repeated sexual assault by her grandmother’s boyfriend between the ages of two and five. According to her lawyers, she ‘drew a man with a huge penis and demonic face to explain what happened in her home’ as a child.
The early childhood abuse was followed by a rape at age 11 by a neighbor, who was arrested and pleaded no contest. He served no prison time and moved back into the same neighborhood shortly after.
She was hospitalized at 12 following a suicide attempt.
At 17, Pike was reportedly raped again by a stranger. Court and clemency records also indicate she was diagnosed with severe PTSD and bipolar disorder in the years that followed.2
“Her actions at 18 years old cannot be separated from a childhood marked by repeated rape, sexual abuse, and neglect that went unaddressed by the adults and state systems meant to protect her,” the petition states.
Pike’s attorney, Kelly Gleason, framed the governor’s decision as an opportunity to address a broader failure.
“The governor now has an opportunity to protect a victim of child rape and correct the mistakes of the adults, institutions and systems that consistently failed Christa as a child,” she said.
The state does not dispute that Pike experienced this abuse.
Outside advocacy groups have joined the appeal
Beyond her legal team, several organizations focused on childhood trauma and abuse prevention have also submitted appeals on Pike’s behalf.
One such group is made up of individuals and organizations focused on raising awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences.
“Christa experienced virtually every form of adversity that those of us who work in this field seek to prevent,” their petition reads.
“Her childhood was marked by chronic sexual abuse and rape, physical and emotional abuse, neglect, caregiver substance abuse, domestic and family violence, poverty, food insecurity, repeated moves and changes in schools, unstable caregivers, and the loss of the one adult she experienced as a consistent source of love and security.”
A separate group, Mercy for Christa, has also petitioned the governor, arguing that life imprisonment would be a more appropriate sentence than execution. The petition has almost reached 25,000 signatures.
“By the time Christa was 18, she had been raped twice. She bears a network of scars on her back from childhood beatings. This childhood trauma left her with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
As of now, Pike’s execution by lethal injection remains scheduled for September 30.
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