Tennessee prepares to execute a woman for a crime she committed at age 18

Nashville, Tennessee (AP) — The state of Tennessee is set to execute Christa Gail Pike, a woman who committed a murder at the age of 18 in 1995. This execution would be the first of a woman in the state in at least two centuries. Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday morning at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

Pike, along with her then-boyfriend, was found guilty of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate from a job training facility in Knoxville. The crime received significant media attention due to the pentagram carved into Slemmer's body and other elements that fueled fears of Satan worship during the 1980s and 1990s "satanic panic."

Pike maintains her guilt, but her supporters argue that her age at the time of the crime, mental illness, and a history of severe sexual abuse warrant a different sentence. Pike's legal team has requested the U.S. Supreme Court to halt her execution, but their request was denied. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also denied Pike clemency on Monday.

"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done," Pike stated in her clemency petition. "Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."

The victim's mother, May Martinez, supports the execution, stating that she has waited decades for it to happen. She traveled from Florida to witness the execution alongside her husband. Since 1976, only 18 women have been put to death in the United States, representing about 1% of all executions. The last execution of a woman occurred in Missouri in 2023, marking the first execution of a transgender woman in the country.