Tennessee is set to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Christa Pike was 18 when she killed a classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row. Now 50, she is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday in what would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed Slemmer. The case got widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body.

Pike does not deny her guilt, but her attorneys and supporters argue a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teen with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer’s mother wants the execution to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he would not grant clemency. Pike’s attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution.

Pike's attorneys said she experienced an exceptionally traumatic and abusive childhood.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused starting from when she was a toddler and that she was raped at ages 11 and 17. He said Pike's lawyers at the penalty phase of her trial did not present the jury with what he said was critical information about her past or argue that her age should be a consideration.

Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Pike told police she initially only wanted to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in a frenzied attack. In her clemency petition, Pike’s attorneys said her untreated mental illness and background made her unable to “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize 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 today is known about adolescent brain development and that Pike's death sentence is an outlier. He noted that Pike's boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teen admitted to being an accessory and received probation.

In the modern death penalty era, Ferrell said, other 18-year-olds who were sentenced to death in Tennessee have since had their sentences reduced.

The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people nationwide have been executed for crimes they committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era, but that death sentences for those in that age group have become increasingly rare.

“If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said.

Speaking by telephone from Florida, Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, also pointed to her daughter's age and said Slemmer never got a chance to grow up.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez said.

Martinez said 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.”

She said her daughter called her from Job Corps on the night of the murder, but the call was dropping because of bad reception. When Martinez called back, her daughter had already gone out.

“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said.

The slaying rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp, Pike's boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body.

If Pike’s execution proceeds as scheduled, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1820, Maher said.

Executions of female inmates are also rare in the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.

Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman, for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put a female inmate to death. Georgia executed a woman in 2015.

Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama.