Tennessee Prepares a Rare Execution Team
Tennessee is preparing an all-female team to carry out Christa Gail Pike’s lethal injection on Wednesday. Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, and if the execution proceeds as scheduled, she would be the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years. The sentence is set for 10 a.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike’s attorneys asked that male guards stay out of the execution room while she is restrained on the gurney and prepared for pentobarbital. They argued that being strapped down by men would trigger memories of sexual abuse she experienced as a child.
Attorneys Point to Abuse and PTSD
A clinical psychologist testified that the gurney, straps, and presence of men could cause Pike to collapse into memories of the assaults that began when she was a toddler. A coalition of sexual-violence specialists also wrote to Gov. Bill Lee, warning that the process could make her “feel and believe that she is being raped to death.” On September 2, Pike’s legal team filed a 226-page petition asking Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole. The attorneys argued that jurors never heard that Pike was raped as a young child, that a 37-year-old neighbor raped her when she was 11 and received a suspended sentence, or that a stranger raped her at 17. Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD. Her attorneys wrote, “Christa was broken, not evil,” and said Lee could protect a child-rape victim while correcting the failures of the adults, institutions, and systems that failed her.
The Crime That Put Pike on Death Row
In January 1995, Pike was 18 when she and two other Job Corps students lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to the University of Tennessee agriculture campus in Knoxville. Slemmer was brutally beaten, pentagrams and satanic symbols were carved into her body, and her throat was slit. Her head was so badly damaged that Pike was able to keep a piece of her skull. Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s 17-year-old boyfriend, received a life sentence because he was too young to face the death penalty in Tennessee. Shadolla Peterson, who was also 18, testified for the state and received probation. The case remains at the center of the dispute over whether Pike’s childhood abuse and mental-health diagnoses should change her punishment.
Slemmer’s Mother Rejects the Clemency Bid
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, plans to drive more than eight hours from Jacksonville to watch the execution. Martinez called Pike’s clemency request “complete baloney” and said she does not believe Pike should receive special treatment. “She didn’t consider how my daughter felt,” Martinez said. “She’s just playing the system … It’s all bullcrap.” The Tennessee Supreme Court refused to halt the lethal injection on September 23. Pike’s legal team has said it will take the case to the Supreme Court, leaving the execution and the clemency fight still contested.
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