New Delhi: Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christa Pike, a 50-year-old death row inmate convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, by lethal injection on Wednesday, in what would be the US state’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years. The execution is set for 10am local time at Riverbend maximum security institution in Nashville.
The Tennessee governor, Bill Lee, declined Pike’s request for clemency on Monday after reviewing the case and said he would not intervene. Pike’s lawyers have asked the US supreme court to stay the execution, leaving the country’s highest court as one of the final avenues for halting the sentence.
The Tennessee department of correction has scheduled Pike’s execution under the state’s single drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital. Her lawyers filed a stay application on September 25, alongside a petition seeking supreme court review after the Tennessee supreme court refused to halt the execution.
Civil rights groups including the American civil liberties union and Amnesty International had urged Lee to commute Pike’s sentence. Lee said that after “deliberate consideration” and a thorough review, he was upholding Tennessee’s sentence and did not plan to intervene.
deeply saddened and heartbroken” by the decision. They argue that her sentence fails to account adequately for her age at the time of the crime, severe childhood trauma and later understanding of adolescent brain development.
Pike was 18 when Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville Job corps centre, was killed in 1995. She was convicted the following year of first-degree murder and conspiracy and became the youngest woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in the modern death-penalty era.
Her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike’s lawyers have cited the difference between their sentences as part of their case against her execution. Associated Press reported that Shipp was denied parole last year.
Pike’s lawyers say jurors did not hear the full extent of her childhood sexual abuse, neglect and trauma during sentencing. They also cite later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Pike, who has never denied her role in Slemmer’s killing, said in her clemency petition that it took her years to understand the gravity of what she had done and the number of lives affected.
The death penalty information center said 275 people have been executed nationwide in the modern death-penalty era for crimes committed at ages 18, 19 or 20, although such death sentences have become increasingly rare. Slemmer’s mother has opposed clemency and told Associated Press that she wants the execution to proceed, saying she has waited decades for Pike’s sentence to be carried out.
Tennessee has not executed a woman in more than 200 years. The death-penalty information center cites an 1820 execution as the last such case, while Pike’s supreme court filing disputes that record and argues that the last verified execution of a woman in the state occurred in 1819.
Executions of women also remain rare across the US. Eighteen women have been executed nationwide since capital punishment resumed in 1976, accounting for about one per cent of all executions during that period.
Pike’s application for a stay remains pending before the US supreme court. Unless a court intervenes, Tennessee is scheduled to carry out the execution on Wednesday.