Christa Pike, the first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in two centuries, is seeking an all-female lethal injection team, arguing that men taking part in her execution could trigger trauma linked to her history of sexual abuse.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she lured fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, to a secluded area of the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. On Jan. 12, 1995, Pike and her boyfriend tortured Slemmer and killed her.
Nearly three decades after her conviction, Pike is scheduled to be executed Sept. 30. Her request for an all-female execution team is part of a broader legal effort that cites the sexual abuse she experienced as a child and teenager.
If Tennessee cannot accommodate the request, Pike plans to seek execution by hanging instead.
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, dismissed the proposal 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 — she’s just playing the system … It’s all bullcrap.”
Pike’s attorneys are also asking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to grant clemency and reduce her sentence to life in prison without parole, according to the newspaper.
The lawyers argue that the institutions and adults responsible for Pike failed to address years of sexual and physical abuse, neglect and domestic violence during her childhood.
A 226-page clemency petition filed in September says Pike was sexually abused between the ages of 2 and 5. It also alleges that when she was 11, a 37-year-old neighbor raped her and received only a suspended sentence.
Pike later reported that, at 17, a stranger dragged her into the woods and raped her as she walked to a store. Her attorneys say the attacker was never identified.
Following her death sentence, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
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According to the newspaper, the jury that decided her punishment never heard evidence concerning her alleged history of sexual abuse.
Her lawyers contend that omitting that history kept jurors from fully understanding the troubled teenager before them. They acknowledge that the circumstances do not justify Slemmer’s killing, but argue the information might have led jurors to spare Pike’s life.
“Christa was broken, not evil,” her attorneys wrote in the clemency petition.
“She was broken by a mental health system, juvenile system, and a criminal justice system that ignored, misdiagnosed, and mistreated her at every turn.”
Court records from Pike’s original trial, however, offer a grim account of Slemmer’s final hours.
According to court documents obtained by news.com.au, Pike told fellow student and friend Kim Iloilo on Jan. 11 that she planned to kill Slemmer because she “felt mean that day.”
At about 8 p.m. the next evening, Pike lured Slemmer away by pretending they were going to a Blockbuster video store.
With her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and acquaintance Shadolla Peterson, Pike took Slemmer to an isolated location. Pike and Shipp beat her, cut her throat and carved satanic symbols into her body.
By 10:15 p.m., Pike and the others 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.
