Author, Stephanie Hegarty
Place of work, BBC World Service
Published 2 minutes ago
Reading time: 7 min
The original of this material in English can be read here.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has rejected a clemency request filed by Krista Pike, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday. She has one last chance - her lawyers have filed a petition with the US Supreme Court, hoping for a last-minute reprieve. If executed, Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Ashley Sellars last spoke to her friend Krista Pike earlier this week, when Pike texted her from her death row in the US state of Tennessee while awaiting execution by lethal injection.
Pike told Sellars she did not want anyone close to her to attend her execution Wednesday.
“She doesn’t want us to go through this,” Sellars says.
Sellars finds it difficult to recognize this woman, whom she knew only as kind and caring, as someone who committed a heinous crime 31 years ago.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old they met at a job training camp for teens with behavior problems.
The murder sparked a media outcry in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1995 when Colleen was found with a pentagram, a symbol of a satanic ritual, carved into her chest.
Pike accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to poach her boyfriend. Two other campers later testified that Pike bragged about the murder both before and after it was committed, and also showed them a piece of Colleen's skull.
A year later, she was sentenced to death, and Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
After years of unsuccessful appeals, Pike's execution is scheduled for Wednesday. If it goes ahead, Pike will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Since the 1970s, only 18 women—and 1,663 men—have been executed in the United States.
Colleen's mother said she wants Pike to be executed so her slain daughter can "finally find peace."
However, Pike's lawyers, who filed a 226-page petition for clemency, are still hoping for a reprieve. UN human rights experts also called for the execution to be stopped.
Pike has a documented history of childhood sexual abuse and lived in conditions of neglect and neglect. Her lawyers believe that if she were a teenager today and found guilty of the same crime, she would not be sentenced to death.
In the years since her conviction, her defense team has unearthed details of her childhood that they say the jury had no opportunity to consider.
“It’s amazing that they didn’t present any details about her history of violence and rape, even though they knew about it,” said Sandra Babcock, an expert on gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School who worked on Pike’s defense. “Her case is so unique and compelling not only because of her truly unfathomable history of sexual abuse, but because of the combination of that with her young age and mental illness.”
In 1995, forensic psychologist Dr. Diana McCoy, hired by Pike's defense team, determined that both of her parents had completely neglected her. McCoy's report found that Pike was physically and sexually abused by several of her mother's husbands and boyfriends, and was raped several times: once at age 11 and again at age 17. It later turned out that in early childhood she was repeatedly raped by her grandmother's boyfriend. McCoy said Pike's mother did not believe the girl that the rapes actually happened.
However, Pike's lawyer, who represented her at trial, did not call McCoy as a witness or interview many of her recommended witnesses. Those details emerged more than a decade later during her retrial hearing, when a new team of lawyers argued that defense counsel had provided ineffective assistance—but the judge overruled that objection.
Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in prison in 2021 and has been on medication since then.
Later, Dr. Bethany Brand, another forensic psychologist who worked on the defense team and examined Pike in 2023, said that her case was extremely rare because she was abused by so many people who were supposed to protect her.
“Her childhood was full of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. She was sexually abused by a number of men - starting from her pre-school age,” she says.
Brand notes that Pike had untreated manic episodes caused by bipolar disorder, as well as untreated post-traumatic stress disorder. “Both of these factors combined certainly contributed to how threatening she perceived the girl she ultimately killed, as well as her inability to control her emotions in that situation.”
Babcock adds: “If she is allowed to be executed, it will mean that the death penalty in this country has become a farce. It is not intended for the worst of the worst. It targets those who receive the worst legal protections and who are the most traumatized and vulnerable.”
"She must answer for this"
Last year, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that Pike had failed to show circumstances that would justify reducing her sentence. All appeals were exhausted and a date was set for her execution.
A federal appeals court previously ruled that jurors already knew about her difficult childhood through testimony from her mother, father and aunt given during the trial. And the new evidence of bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and brain damage "largely repeated" what the jury had already heard and would not have changed the verdict.
The case has some parallels with the high-profile case of killer Lisa Montgomery, whose lawyers also argued that she was a mentally ill abuse victim deserving of clemency.
Montgomery's legal pleas failed to reduce her sentence, and she was executed by lethal injection in Indiana in 2021.
If Tennessee Governor Bill Lee does not pardon Pike, her execution will take place on September 30. A decision on the matter is unlikely to be made until the very last moment, and Lee has never previously pardoned anyone in a death sentence case.
This week, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Pike's request to stay the execution. Her lawyers say they are discussing next steps.
Pike requested that an all-female team accompany her on the day of her execution. She claims that if she is guarded by men, it will worsen her psychological trauma. Tennessee officials have said they plan, but do not guarantee, that female guards will take Pike to the prison where she will be executed.
Colleen's mother, Mae Martinez, supports Krista's execution.
“She committed a crime. I think she should answer for this,” she said in 2021 on WBIR in Knoxville, and told the BBC this week that she stands by her words.
Pike must suffer before she dies, Martinez told WBIR-TV. “It would make me feel better if she went through the same pain that Colleen went through.”
“My heart breaks every day because I relive it all over again and I can’t live like this anymore and I want it to happen before I die,” she added. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen, how she died and how hard it was. I just want Christa to be executed so I can put an end to this, ease my daughter's suffering, so she can finally find peace."
“When I try to put some perspective on what's on TV or the terrible tragedy that happened to Colleen, the only thing that makes sense is the mental health and trauma and how people deal with things when they don't have what they need,” Sellars says. “These terrible things happen in your youth, and then these traumas filter through you into society and you hurt someone else.”
Sellars met Pike in prison while serving a 25-year sentence for her involvement in a robbery-murder. They communicated through food service holes in the doors of their cells in the maximum security unit. Sellars now works as an activist advocating for justice reform and advocating for crime victims.
“It’s important for people to feel that every life is valuable, right? It's important for them to know that Colleen's life mattered, she says. “Krista at this point, I think, is fighting much more for her life to matter than for just living.”
