Christa Pike, a Tennessee death-row inmate who became the state’s first woman sentenced to death in two centuries, is seeking an all-female lethal-injection team. Her attorneys say the presence of men during her final moments could trigger trauma linked to her history of sexual abuse.
Pike was 18 when she lured Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student, to a secluded area of the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike and her boyfriend tortured Slemmer before killing her on Jan. 12, 1995.
Now 50 and scheduled to be executed Sept. 30, Pike is asking Tennessee officials to provide an execution team made up entirely of women. The request is based on what her lawyers describe as severe abuse she endured throughout her childhood and adolescence.
If the state cannot accommodate that request, Pike says she would prefer to be executed by hanging.
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, dismissed the request as an attempt to manipulate the system.
“I don’t think she should be allowed to have any special treatment,” Martinez told the Daily Mail. She added that Pike “didn’t consider how my daughter felt” and accused her of “playing the system,” calling the request “all bullcrap.”
At the same time, Pike’s attorneys are asking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to grant clemency and replace her death sentence with life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the newspaper.
In a 226-page petition filed in September, the defense argues that Pike’s history of sexual and physical abuse, neglect and domestic violence was never properly addressed by the adults and institutions responsible for her care.
The petition alleges that Pike was sexually abused between the ages of 2 and 5. It also states that when she was 11, a 37-year-old neighbor raped her and received only a suspended sentence.
Pike’s lawyers further claim that, at 17, she was pulled into the woods and raped by an unidentified stranger while walking to a store.
Following her death sentence, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
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According to the newspaper, jurors who decided her punishment did not hear evidence about her alleged history of sexual abuse.
Her defense team maintains that the omission kept jurors from seeing the full picture of the troubled teenager before them. While the attorneys acknowledge that Pike’s experiences do not justify Slemmer’s murder, they argue that the information might have influenced the jury to spare her life.
“Christa was broken, not evil,” her lawyers wrote in the clemency petition.
They argued that Pike was failed by the mental-health, juvenile and criminal-justice systems, which they say repeatedly ignored, misdiagnosed and mistreated her.
Court records from Pike’s original trial, however, described a violent and calculated attack that ended with Slemmer’s death.
According to court documents obtained by news.com.au, Pike told her friend and fellow student Kim Iloilo on Jan. 11 that she planned to kill Slemmer because she “felt mean that day.”
The next night, at approximately 8 p.m., Pike allegedly persuaded Slemmer to leave with her by saying they were going to a Blockbuster video store.
Pike was accompanied by her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and acquaintance Shadolla Peterson. Court records say Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer, beating her, cutting her throat and carving satanic symbols into her body.
By about 10:15 p.m., the group had returned without Slemmer.
Pike said she heard voices telling her to continue brutalizing Slemmer as she screamed to keep her quiet, according to court documents.
The morning after the bloodbath, Pike celebrated Slemmer’s death.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to death on March 30, 1996, making her one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the US.