Death Row Inmate Christa Pike Makes Unusual Request for All-Female Team Ahead of Scheduled Execution
With just days remaining before her scheduled execution, Christa Pike has made a special request.
She has asked Tennessee officials to keep men off the team that would carry out her execution, should her final efforts for clemency fail, the New York Post reported on Tuesday, September 22.
If her execution goes forward, Pike would become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Pike was 18 when she killed fellow Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995 and was sentenced to death for the crime the following year.
Mercy for Christa/Instagram
Slemmer was attacked on the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus by Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.
Prosecutors said Slemmer was beaten and stabbed, and a pentagram was carved into her chest. Investigators also said Pike kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir, according to Law & Crime.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the killing, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, September 30, at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville.
Her attorneys have requested an all-female execution team, citing Pike’s documented history of Sєxual abuse by men and her post-traumatic stress disorder, the New York Post reported.
The request comes as her lawyers continue urging Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole.
Pike’s 226-page clemency peтιтion details years of childhood Sєxual abuse, neglect and later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD.
Her attorneys argue those circumstances, her age when the crime occurred and nearly three decades in prison should be considered before her execution.
Mercy for Christa/Instagram
Pike has also challenged Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.
Her lawyers say a blood disorder could complicate IV placement and increase the risk of pain.
During an August hearing, her team requested hanging as her preferred alternative, though prison officials testified that method of execution is not authorized under Tennessee law, as reported by WBIR.
As the date approaches, Pike has described struggling to sleep.
“My nerves are shredded. When I do sleep, my brain eats itself,” she said in a documentary interview, according to the Post.
The state has opposed her legal challenge, arguing she has not established that Tennessee’s execution procedure would violate her consтιтutional rights.
Her clemency request remains pending.
✓ Ryan Mitchell
With just days remaining before her scheduled execution, Christa Pike has made a special request. She has asked Tennessee officials to keep men off the team that…