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Christa Pike’s lawyers have raised concerns following the ‘botched’ attempt to execute Tony Carruthers earlier this year
As the date of her scheduled execution looms closer, Christa Gail Pike’s legal team are fighting back against the ‘torturous’ fate she awaits.
The 50-year-old is the only woman on death row in Tennessee and she is set to become the first female to be put to death in the state in around 200 years.
She was sentenced to death in 1996 after she brutally murdered her classmate Colleen Slemmer – but her attorneys fear that officials will ‘botch’ her execution in wake of what happened to triple-murderer Tony Carruthers.
It was announced last October that the Tennessee Supreme Court had set a date to execute Pike, who has spent the last three decades behind bars.
She is set to face the ultimate punishment on 30 September, 2026, due to the grisly crime she committed when she was 18-years-old and enrolled in a Job Corps programme.
Believing that Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, Pike hatched a plan with him and their pal Shadolla Peterson, 18.
Colleen Slemmer was killed by her classmates in Knoxville, Tennessee (WBIR10)
The trio lured the teenager into some woodland in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was then savagely beaten, stabbed, and bludgeoned. A pentagram was also chillingly carved into her forehead and chest.
Prosecutors said that Pike kept a piece of her victim’s skull as a ‘souvenir’ from the murder, which she is said to have shown to fellow pupils.
Court records state that the killer also bragged about how Slemmer had ‘begged’ for her life, while she ‘danced in a circle, smiling and singing’ while informing a student about what she had done.
Pike confessed to torturing and killing the young woman and was found guilty of first-degree murder. When she was sentenced to death in 1996, she became the youngest person on death row at the age of 20.
Shipp received a life sentence for Slemmer’s murder as he was not eligible for the death penalty due to his age, while Peterson received probation after testifying against Pike.
In 2003, another 25 years was added onto Pike’s sentence after she was found guilty of the attempted murder of a fellow inmate whom she had tried to strangle with a shoestring two years prior.
Pike is due to be executed in September this year (Tennessee Department of Corrections)
The lawyers representing Pike – including Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen – released a statement in wake of her execution date being set, urging the state to ‘commute’ her sentence.
Citing her ‘youth and severe mental illness at the time of the crime’, it also went on to say: “Christa’s childhood was fraught with years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect. With time and treatment for bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years later, Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime.”