Christa Pike Asks For An All-Female Execution Team As September 30 Deadline Nears
Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at 10 AM on September 30, eight days from now, and with her clemency petition pending before Governor Bill Lee, she has made an unusual final request: she wants the team that carries out her execution to be composed entirely of women.
Pike was 18 years old in January 1995 when she participated in the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps program.
Slemmer was beaten, stabbed, tortured and had a pentagram carved into her chest. Pike was convicted in 1996 and has been on death row for nearly 30 years, much of that time in solitary confinement.
If executed, she will be the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years and the first person executed in the state for a crime committed at age 18 since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
UN human rights experts called on September 7 for an immediate halt to the execution, citing her childhood history of sexual abuse, mental illness and nearly three decades in solitary confinement.
Her attorneys have also legally challenged Tennessee's lethal injection protocol, citing a blood disorder that could complicate IV placement, a concern made more urgent after the state's failed May 21 attempt to execute Tony Carruthers, which was halted when officials could not establish the required IV access. Governor Lee ultimately granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
No ruling on Pike's clemency petition has been announced.
