The first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in two centuries says she is “at peace” ahead of her scheduled execution, after Gov. Bill Lee declined to intervene in her final appeal for clemency.
“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,” convicted murderer Christa Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News before learning that Lee would not commute her sentence.
“I am not afraid to die,” Pike wrote. “I’m only nervous about the process.”
Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday. If carried out, it will mark Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.
Pike was 18 when she lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student, to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. On Jan. 12, 1995, Pike and her boyfriend tortured Slemmer and killed her in what prosecutors described as a jealous rage.
Pike’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution, arguing that her post-traumatic stress disorder could cause “severe mental suffering and superadded psychological terror” as she is restrained on a gurney for the lethal injection, NBC News reported.
Her lawyers also say a childhood marked by sexual and physical abuse, neglect and domestic violence was never adequately addressed by the adults and institutions responsible for her care. They argue that the trauma was not properly considered by the jury when it weighed the death penalty.
Pike has additionally requested that an all-female team administer the lethal injection, saying the presence of men during her final moments could trigger further trauma.
Tennessee corrections officials have said they will attempt to accommodate some of those requests. NBC reported that female guards may escort Pike from the Nashville prison to a nearby maximum-security facility within 24 hours of the execution.
Officials may also approve her request for an entirely female execution team.
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Pike was among the youngest women in the United States to receive a death sentence when she was condemned in March 1996. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a 226-page clemency petition filed in September, Pike’s attorneys argued that untreated mental illness and years of trauma left 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 with the petition.
Pike attacked Slemmer with a box cutter before beating her with a large piece of asphalt. Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, also carved a Satanic pentagram into the victim’s body.
The brutality of the killing and the occult symbol shocked Knoxville, intensifying the “satanic panic” that swept through the United States during the 1980s and 1990s.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has said she wants the execution to proceed.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez told The Associated Press.
“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.
Shipp, who was 17 when the murder occurred, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teenager who acknowledged acting as an accessory was sentenced to probation.
With Post Wires