Christa Pike, 50, has requested an all-female lethal injection team for her scheduled Sept. 30 execution, citing past sexual trauma as her reason for refusing male executioners.
The condemned Tennessee inmate, who became the first woman sentenced to death in the state in two centuries, has threatened to demand hanging instead if her request cannot be fulfilled. Pike’s attorneys raised the unusual demand in a 226-page clemency petition filed last September, part of a broader effort to spare her life through either procedural accommodation or gubernatorial intervention.
May Martinez, the mother of Pike’s victim Colleen Slemmer, dismissed the request as manipulative. “I don’t think she should be allowed to have any special treatment,” she said. “She didn’t consider how my daughter felt — she’s just playing the system … It’s all bullcrap.”
Pike’s legal team has simultaneously asked Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole. Their petition details a childhood marked by sexual and physical abuse, neglect and domestic violence that they argue was never properly addressed by institutions responsible for her care. Attorneys claim Pike was sexually abused between ages 2 and 5, then raped at age 11 by a 37-year-old neighbor who received only a suspended sentence. At 17, she was allegedly dragged into the woods and raped by an unidentified stranger while walking to a store.
After her death sentence, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD. Her lawyers maintain that no evidence of this abuse was presented during jury deliberations over her punishment, preventing jurors from fully understanding the troubled teenager before them.
“Christa was broken, not evil,” her attorneys wrote in the petition.
“She was broken by a mental health system, juvenile system, and a criminal justice system that ignored, misdiagnosed, and mistreated her at every turn.”
Court documents from Pike’s original trial reveal starkly different details about the night of Jan. 12, 1995. Then 18 years old, Pike lured fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, to an isolated spot on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. Pike had told friend and fellow student Kim Iloilo the day before that she intended to kill Slemmer simply because she “felt mean that day.” Around 8:00 p.m., Pike convinced Slemmer to leave under the guise of going to a Blockbuster video store, accompanied by boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and acquaintance Shadolla Peterson. Pike and Shipp beat Slemmer, slashed her throat and carved satanic symbols into her body. Pike later said she heard voices telling her to continue brutalizing Slemmer as she screamed, in order to keep her quiet. By 10:15 p.m., the group returned without her. The following morning, Pike celebrated the killing. She was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder on March 30, 1996, becoming one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the United States.
A special master appointed to review Pike’s execution plan recently declined to intervene in the case, according to WPLN News.
Pike is scheduled to be executed at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.