Tennessee is set to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years
Her lawyers say childhood abuse and mental illness make the death sentence inappropriate, while the victim’s mother wants the execution carried out.
- On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee denied clemency for Christa Pike, stating he will not intervene in her execution scheduled for Wednesday, September 30.
- Pike was convicted for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, whom she lured to a secluded area; her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, received life with parole eligibility.
- Defense attorneys, including Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, argue Pike was an 18-year-old with untreated mental illness and childhood abuse, contending her death sentence is an outlier.
- Execution would mark Tennessee's first of a woman in more than 200 years, highlighting rarity, while legal teams have questioned the state's lethal injection protocol and medical staff competency.
- Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, insists the execution proceed so her daughter "finally can be resting," while Pike's attorneys have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay.
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She was sentenced to death for torturing and murdering a 19-year-old girl in 1995
Sapo
SIC NotíciasIt was expected that Christa Pike, sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of a 19-year-old girl, would be executed by lethal injection in Tennessee, becoming the first woman to be executed in the state in over 200 years.
Today, Wednesday, the U.S. state of Tennessee plans to execute a 50-year-old female prisoner, who was sentenced to death by a young woman in 1995, in the first execution of a woman in over 200 years in Tennessee, South United States.
She killed one of her university classmates she suspected of trying to steal her boyfriend, and after 30 years on death row, she is to be executed this Wednesday.
Christa Pike, the youngest woman in modern U.S. history to be sentenced to death and the only woman on death row in Tennessee, was sentenced in 1996 for the brutal murder of a classmate. She fought for the death penalty all her life, but on Wednesday, September 30 at 10:00 a.m. (5:00 p.m. CEST), she will be executed after 30 years. She will become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years.
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