Tennessee to execute first woman in 200 years as clemency denied

• Defense lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court for an emergency stay, citing Pike's childhood trauma, mental illness, and age at the time of the crime.
• Pike was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.

Death row inmate Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee denied her request for executive clemency, paving the way for what would be the state’s first execution of a woman in over two centuries, according to The Guardian. 

Pike, now 50, was 18 years old when she and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, murdered 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995. Pike was convicted of first-degree murder the following year and sentenced to death, making her the youngest woman placed on death row in US history.

The case drew widespread national attention due to the youth of those involved, the extreme violence of the attack, and a satanic symbol carved into the victim's body.

"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," Governor Lee said in a statement on Monday.

Following Lee's decision, Pike's legal team submitted an emergency stay request to the US Supreme Court. Her attorneys expressed “heartbreak” over the governor's refusal to grant clemency, stating that the decision disregards decades of legal and scientific consensus surrounding adolescent trauma and accountability.

"The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists," Pike’s attorneys said in a statement. "Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women."

In her clemency petition, Pike expressed remorse for the killing. "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done... It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime," she stated.

If the sentence is carried out, Pike will be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820, when Martin Eve was hanged for being an accessory to murder.