Death Row Killer Makes Chilling Final Request

Death row inmate Christa Pike has made an unusual request as Tennessee prepares to execute her for the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

Pike, 50, wants an all-female execution team if her scheduled Sept. 30 lethal injection goes forward, according to her attorneys, who argue that being physically handled by men during the procedure could intensify trauma linked to sexual abuse she says she suffered beginning in childhood.

The request comes as Pike’s legal team makes a final push to stop an execution that would make her the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than two centuries.

Pike is currently scheduled to die at 10 a.m. CDT on Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Tennessee Department of Correction has already begun making preparations, including selecting seven journalists to serve as official media witnesses.

Her lawyers, however, are still fighting on several fronts.

Attorney Stephen Ferrell has argued that having men administer the lethal injection could worsen Pike’s post-traumatic stress and increase the risk of severe psychological suffering during the execution.

Pike’s attorneys have said she endured years of abuse and neglect as a child and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder.

They are asking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Her legal team filed a 226-page clemency petition making that case ahead of the execution.

Pike’s attorneys have also raised concerns about the mechanics of the lethal injection itself.

They contend that a blood disorder and problems establishing intravenous access could make the procedure especially difficult and potentially painful. Pike previously challenged Tennessee’s lethal-injection protocol and proposed hanging as an alternative execution method.

That argument has taken on added significance after Tennessee’s last attempted execution ran into serious problems.

On May 21, Gov. Lee halted the execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers and granted him a one-year reprieve after the execution team was unable to establish the backup IV line required under Tennessee’s protocol.

According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, medical personnel successfully established Carruthers’ primary IV but could not find a suitable vein for the second line. An attempt to establish a central line was also unsuccessful, and the execution was ultimately called off.

Pike’s supporters have pointed to that failed attempt while questioning whether the state can safely carry out her execution.

Cornell Law School professor Sandra Babcock, who has advocated for Pike, has also called on Lee to commute her sentence, arguing that her treatment during decades of incarceration and the circumstances surrounding the planned execution raise serious human-rights concerns.

The state, however, has continued preparing for Sept. 30.

Pike was only 18 when Slemmer was killed in Knoxville on Jan. 12, 1995.

Both women were students at the Knoxville Job Corps Center.

According to the Tennessee Supreme Court’s account of the case, Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and fellow student Shadolla Peterson went with Slemmer to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee agricultural campus.

Slemmer was subjected to a prolonged and extraordinarily violent assault.

The Tennessee Supreme Court said she was beaten, cut and stabbed, and that Pike carved a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive. Her throat was also slashed.

Pike later gave investigators a detailed statement describing the killing.

A jury convicted her of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. She received the death penalty for the murder and an additional 25-year sentence for conspiracy.

The Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously upheld her conviction and death sentence in 1998.

Nearly three decades later, Pike remains Tennessee’s only woman on death row.

Her approaching execution has attracted national and international attention, with her attorneys and supporters emphasizing that she was 18 at the time of the murder and arguing that jurors did not have the understanding of adolescent brain development, trauma and mental illness that exists today.

Those arguments do not change the brutality of Slemmer’s murder, which has remained at the center of the state’s case for carrying out Pike’s sentence.

Unless a court intervenes or Gov. Lee grants clemency or another reprieve, Tennessee is moving ahead with the Sept. 30 execution.

The Department of Correction has already selected its official media witnesses and issued instructions for reporters covering the execution at Riverbend.

Tennessee law also permits immediate family members of both the victim and the condemned prisoner to witness an execution.

For now, Pike’s request for an all-female team adds another unresolved question to the final days before one of Tennessee’s most closely watched executions in years.