The United States Supreme Court rejected a final request from Christa Pike on Tuesday and allowed Tennessee to proceed with her scheduled execution. Consequently, officials prepared to carry out a lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday.
Pike, then 50, received a death sentence in 1996 for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Slemmer, then 19, attended the same Knoxville Job Corps program. Meanwhile, prosecutors said Pike and her then boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp lured Slemmer to an isolated site, beat her, tortured her and killed her.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee rejected Pike’s clemency petition on Monday. Afterward, Lee issued a statement. “After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” Lee said.
Pike’s lawyers then turned to the Supreme Court. However, the justices denied the stay without explanation. As a result, Pike stood as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row and faced becoming the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Pike was 18 when the killing occurred. Shipp, then 17, later received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. A third companion, Shadolla Peterson, served as a lookout and later testified for the state.
Investigators found Slemmer’s body with a pentagram carved into her chest. Pike later confessed that she slashed Slemmer’s throat and kept a piece of skull. In later filings, Pike’s lawyers said she suffered severe childhood abuse, including rape, and asked courts to commute the sentence to life without parole.
Amnesty International and more than 100 women’s advocacy groups also urged a reprieve. Still, lower courts and the governor declined to halt the sentence. The execution was set for 10 a.m. local time.
