Tennessee Set to Execute Christa Pike for 1995 Murder, First Woman in 200 Years
Tennessee prepares to execute Christa Pike, 50, for the 1995 murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp. Pike, who was 18 at the time, and her boyfriend beat and killed Slemmer, whose body was found with a pentagram carved in her chest. This would mark Tennessee's first execution of a woman in over 200 years.
Pike is set to die by lethal injection at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) on Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Her lawyers had sought clemency citing her young age and mental health issues, including PTSD and a blood condition, but the US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute stay request. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declined to intervene, and the UN urged authorities to halt the execution.
Only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, making Pike's case part of a rare application of capital punishment to female offenders. The execution would make her the 19th woman executed in the US since 1976 and the first in Tennessee in more than two centuries.