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Christa Pike, Youngest Woman On Death Row, Loses Appeal To Stop Execution

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 10:13 PST, Mar 11, 2016

A federal judge has refused to turn over the death sentence of the only female on death row in Tennessee, Christa Pike. In a written ruling released Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Harry S. Mattice, Jr. said the 40-year-old inmate had not proved that her constitutional rights were violated when she was sentenced to death as a 20-year-old.

According to ABC News, Pike’s new lawyers argued that the attorney at the 1996 trial was incompetent, failing to produce valuable evidence at her trial. They also challenged the rationale behind allowing cameras inside the courtroom before the jury could be seated and queried a conflict of interest because the trial lawyer wanted Pike to sign media rights so that he could write a book about her, which she refused to do.

On January 13, 1995, an employee of the University of Tennessee came across a corpse. The body was identified as that of Colleen Slemmer, 19. She was a student of Job Corps — an NGO helping underprivileged youngsters acquire skills and vocational training.

Colleen had been horrifically tortured. She had been viciously sliced across the stomach and chest numerous times. Her skull had been cracked open and a pentagram carved into her chest. Job Corps’ records showed that Colleen and three friends, Christa Pike, Shadolla Peterson, and Tadaryl Shipp had signed out of their dorms the day before along with her. But Colleen never checked back in.

The three friends were taken into custody. Police found Pike’s bloody jeans in her room and a splinter of Colleen’s skull inside her jacket pocket. Police also searched Shipp’s room and found a Satanic Bible and sacrificial altar. Pike had become jealous of her friend and colleague, Colleen, and believed that she wanted to steal her boyfriend. Pike had lured Colleen into the woods along with boyfriend, Shipp, and mutual friend, Peterson, under the pretext they were going to smoke some weed and then she viciously attacked her.

Pike made Colleen remove her clothes and proceeded to stab, slash, and cut her with a box cutter and meat cleaver before smashing her head with a chunk of asphalt and keeping part of her skull as a trophy.

Shipp was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, Peterson was given six years of probation for pleading guilty to being an accessory and Pike, at the age of 20, became the youngest woman ever to be placed on death row to die by electrocution.

Born in 1976, Pike was raised by an alcoholic and abusive grandmother who died when she was just 12. She went to live with her parents, and by age 18, had been thrown out of the house twice. Despite having an IQ of 111, Pike had quit school and joined the Job Corps.

Pike’s new defense team are saying she should not be put to death because neurologist examinations show that frontal lobes of her brain are not well-formed and impede her from making ethical and moral decisions. They also say that beyond the organic brain injury, Pike suffers from post-traumatic stress and bi-polar disorders.

Pikes has proved anything but remorseful in prison. In 2004, she was convicted of trying to strangle another inmate, Patricia Jones, according to Daily Mail, using a shoestring. Pike carried out the attack with another prison inmate, Natasha Cornett, and in a recorded phone call to her mother, bragged about carrying out the attack.

“I betcha if she gets near me, I’m gonna do it again,” she said.

In 2012, two men, including a former prison guard, tried to break Pike out of prison, according to Huffington Post. New Jersey authorities arrested Donald Kohut, who had been visiting Pike in prison and a former correctional officer at the Tennessee Prison for Women, Justin Heflin.

May Martinez, Colleen’s mom, was not surprised to learn about Pike’s alleged attempt to break out of prison.

“A death sentence is not really justice, if they are going to put her to death, they need to do it now,” she said.

[Image courtesy of Tennessee Department of Corrections]

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