Governor rejects clemency plea

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has denied a clemency request from death row inmate Christa Pike, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday.

The crime and conviction

Pike, now fifty, was eighteen when she and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured and murdered Colleen Slemmer, a nineteen-year-old they met at a job training camp for troubled teens. She was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

A historic execution

If the execution proceeds, Pike would be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than two hundred years. Only eighteen women have been executed in the US since the nineteen seventies, compared to one thousand six hundred sixty-three men.

Defence argues brain development

Pike's attorneys say executing her puts Tennessee on singular footing as the first state to execute someone in the modern death penalty era who was a teenager at the time of the offence. They argue an eighteen-year-old brain is not an adult brain.

“With this decision, the State of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: an eighteen-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and eighteen is too young to face execution.”

Victim's mother wants execution

Colleen Slemmer's mother has insisted she wants Pike's execution to move forward so that her daughter finally can be resting. Pike's attorneys have filed a petition with the US Supreme Court hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

Pike's troubled past emerges

Pike has a documented history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect. Her lawyers believe that if she was found guilty of the same crime today as a teenager she would not receive a death sentence, and say she is now a remorseful fifty-year-old woman.

“The eighteen-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists. Christa is a fifty-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.”