Last Application for Execution of Christa Pike Rejected in the USA

The US Supreme Court rejected the last application to postpone the execution on Tuesday. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also did not accept Pike's request for pardon, citing the violence and sexual abuse he suffered during his childhood.

HE COMMITTED THE MURDER WHEN HE WAS 18 YEARS OLD

In January 1995, Pike, along with her boyfriend and another person, took 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer to a wooded area in Knoxville, Tennessee. According to the prosecutor's office, Slemmer was killed there after being tortured.

The murder received wide coverage in the US press of the time due to its brutality. A pentagram shape was carved into the victim's chest, and a piece of his skull was removed. It was stated at the hearing that Pike saw Slemmer as a rival regarding her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.

Pike and Shipp confessed to the murder. Pike was sentenced to death, and Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

ATTENTION WAS DRAWN TO THEIR TRAUMA

In their 226-page pardon application to the governor, Pike's lawyers stated that their client was exposed to violence, neglect and sexual abuse throughout his childhood; She stated that she was raped twice, at the ages of 11 and 17.

The lawyers of Pike, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in prison, argued that their client, who is 50 years old today, is not the same person as his 18-year-old self and asked for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

May Martinez, the mother of the murdered Slemmer, supports the execution.

EXECUTION OF WOMEN IS EXTREMELY RARE

Execution of female prisoners is extremely rare in the United States. Only 18 of the 1,683 people executed since the Supreme Court allowed the reinstatement of death sentences in 1976 have been women, according to Death Penalty Information Center data.

Pike's file also came to the fore internationally. A group of United Nations human rights experts have called for the death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment.

If the execution goes ahead, Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. He will also be recorded as the only person executed in Tennessee in the modern US death penalty era, as he committed the crime when he was only 18 years old.