The United States Supreme Court has rejected a last-minute appeal by death-row inmate Christa Pike, clearing the way for her scheduled execution in Tennessee on Wednesday over the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If the execution proceeds, she will become the first woman put to death by the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years.
The Supreme Court rejected Pike’s request for a stay of execution on Tuesday, September 29, after her lawyers sought an emergency intervention to prevent the sentence from being carried out. The court did not provide an explanation for its decision, according to reports.
The development followed Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s rejection of Pike’s clemency request on Monday. Lee said he had reviewed the case and decided not to intervene, leaving the death sentence in place.
Pike was 18 when Slemmer was killed in January 1995. The two were students at a Job Corps vocational training centre in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, lured Slemmer into a wooded area before she was beaten and stabbed to death.
The case attracted considerable attention because of the brutality of the killing and the carving of a pentagram into Slemmer’s body. Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death, while Shipp received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. A third person connected to the case later testified for the prosecution and received probation.
Pike has not denied her involvement in Slemmer’s killing. However, her lawyers have argued that the circumstances surrounding her childhood and her age at the time of the crime should have received greater consideration during sentencing.
Her defence highlighted a history of severe childhood abuse, neglect and sexual violence. Her lawyers also cited diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, arguing that advances in understanding adolescent brain development should be considered in evaluating the death sentence imposed on an 18-year-old.
Pike’s legal team has also argued that the person she was at 18 should be distinguished from the 50-year-old woman she is today. They said she has expressed remorse, received treatment and supported other incarcerated women during her decades in prison.
Her lawyers described the governor’s decision as deeply disappointing and maintained that Pike’s background and development should have been taken into account before carrying out the sentence.
The case has also attracted opposition from human-rights advocates. A group of United Nations human-rights experts called for Pike’s death sentence to be commuted, while other advocates have raised concerns about executing someone for an offence committed at the age of 18.
Slemmer’s family, however, has expressed support for the execution. Her mother, May Martinez, has said she wants the sentence carried out and plans to attend the execution.
The case is particularly notable because executions of women remain relatively rare in the United States. According to figures cited by the Death Penalty Information Center, only 18 women have been executed in the country since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, compared with more than 1,600 men.
Pike would also become the first person in Tennessee’s modern death-penalty era to be executed for a crime committed at the age of 18, according to Reuters. Tennessee has scheduled the execution for Wednesday morning, although further legal intervention would still have to occur for the execution to be halted.
The case has consequently reopened questions in the United States about capital punishment, the significance of age and brain development at the time of an offence, and whether severe childhood trauma should influence the sentencing of people convicted of serious crimes.
For now, however, the Supreme Court’s rejection of Pike’s final appeal and the governor’s refusal to grant clemency have left the execution scheduled to proceed.
