Appeals court halts Tennessee's first execution of a woman in two centuries

NASHVILLE, Tennessee - A US appeals court on Sept 30 halted the execution of death row inmate Christa Pike in Tennessee, less than two hours before she was scheduled to become the first woman that state has put to death in more than two hundred years.

The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a “short stay of execution” to give it time to weigh Pike’s claim that her allegations of childhood sexual abuse were not adequately considered during her sentencing. The court did not provide a specific timeframe.

Pike, whose clemency petition highlighting childhood trauma and sexual abuse was denied by Governor Bill Lee, would be the only person in the modern era of US capital punishment to be executed in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.

The Tennessee attorney-general’s office immediately asked the US Supreme Court to vacate the stay order.

The Supreme Court on Sept 29 rejected an 11th-hour bid for a stay of execution, which is set to take place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, the state capital.

Pike, now 50, was 18 in January 1995 when she, a 17-year-old boyfriend and a third companion lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational centre, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her.

The grisly nature of the slaying, which involved the perpetrators carving the shape of a pentagram in the victim’s chest and taking a chunk of her skull as a souvenir of the carnage, drew intense media coverage at the time.

Trial testimony indicated that Pike viewed Slemmer as a rival for the affections of her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.

Pike and Shipp confessed to the killing, and both were convicted the following year of first-degree murder. Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Their co-defendant, Shadolla Peterson, who was 18 at the time of the murder and had acted as a lookout for the other two, appeared as a witness for the prosecution and received probation.

Currently the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, Pike was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in an assault on another inmate, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.

In a 226-page petition asking the governor to commute her death penalty to a life sentence without the possibility of parole, her lawyers documented her history as the childhood victim of violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17. And they cited the diagnoses she received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Her lawyers also pointed to evidence that Pike’s mother drank heavily during pregnancy, contributing to faulty brain development that made it difficult for their client to control her impulses as a young person.

“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” her lawyers wrote in response to Lee’s denial of clemency. “Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.”

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has spoken out in support of the execution.

Executions of female prison inmates are exceedingly rare in the US, with women accounting for just 18 of the 1,683 people put to death since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. Before Sept 30, Tennessee had executed 17 people.

Pike’s case has drawn international attention, with a group of United Nations human rights experts issuing a recent statement calling for commutation of her death sentence.

Sexual violence and trauma experts have also spoken out on her behalf, arguing that the procedures surrounding lethal injection would likely cause Pike to experience severe, traumatic flashbacks of child sexual abuse and rape, adding to the cruelty and anguish of her death.

Tennessee prison officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man convicted of murders after failing to find a suitable vein for a lethal injection. REUTERS