Tennessee prepares to execute woman convicted of 1995 murder

Tennessee is preparing to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday, in what would be the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Pike, now 50, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She was convicted of killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job-training facility, in 1995.

Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area because she feared Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and struck her with a piece of asphalt. Pike’s boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, admitted carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s body and received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

Pike alone was sentenced to death. The case drew attention during the period sometimes known as the “satanic panic”, partly because of the pentagram and other details. As the execution approached, debate focused on whether Pike’s age at the time of the offence should affect her punishment.

Pike does not deny the killing. In a clemency statement, she described herself as a mentally ill 18-year-old and said it took years to understand the gravity of her actions. Her supporters also cite severe sexual abuse, including rape beginning when she was a toddler.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s sentence was unusual because death sentences imposed on other 18-year-olds in Tennessee had later been vacated. The Supreme Court rejected her lawyers’ request to stop the execution, while Governor Bill Lee denied clemency. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, supports carrying out the lethal injection and said she had waited decades to see the sentence fulfilled.

Nationally, executions of women remain rare: the Death Penalty Information Center says 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, about 1 per cent of all executions.