Death row killer Christa Pike's final request denied days before scheduled execution

Christa Pike's final bid to have her death sentence commuted has been denied just days before she is scheduled to be executed.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has rejected the 50-year-old's request for clemency, meaning her death sentence will remain in place ahead of her scheduled lethal injection on Wednesday (30 Sept).

Pike's lawyers had asked the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, arguing that her age, traumatic childhood and mental health struggles should have been taken into account when she was sentenced to death.

But after reviewing her case, Lee has decided not to intervene.

"After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike's request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene," Lee said in a statement, as per the BBC.

Pike has been on death row for over 30 years (Tennessee Department of Corrections)

The decision is a significant blow for Pike, who has spent more than three decades on death row following the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, and had been hoping clemency would prevent her execution.

If it goes ahead as planned, she will become the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years.

What did Christa Pike do?

The case has attracted significant attention because Pike was just 18 when she murdered 19-year-old Slemmer.

The convicted killer and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, were students at a Job Corps training centre in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they had met Slemmer.

Pike had accused Slemmer of attempting to take her boyfriend, and with Shipp and another student, Shadolla Peterson, she lured her victim to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee's Agricultural campus before attacking and killing her.

Pike, Shipp and Peterson all received very different sentences (WBIR/NBC)

The murder caused a media frenzy, with prosecutors presenting evidence that a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer's chest. Pike was also accused of showing another student a piece of Slemmer's skull following the killing.

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to death in 1996.

Shipp was also convicted of the same offences, but because he was 17 when the murder happened, he received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Peterson, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, testified against Pike and Shipp, and received six years' probation.

Pike's lawyers have spent years arguing that the woman sentenced to death in 1996 is not the same person she is today.

What did her lawyers argue in their petition?

Her 226-page clemency petition detailed what her legal team described as a childhood marked by severe abuse, rape, neglect and abandonment.

Slemmer had been a student at the Job Corps, alongside Pike (First Coast News/ABC)

They also pointed to mental health problems, including diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD, which they say were not properly presented to the jury at the time of her sentencing.

In their response to Governor Lee's decision, Pike's attorneys said: "With this decision, the State of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: an 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and 18 is too young to face execution."

They added: "The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists.

"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."

Her lawyers also argued that Tennessee would be taking an unprecedented step by executing someone for a crime committed at 18.

Pike was 18 when she was sentenced (Cornell Law School)

"Moving ahead with Pike’s execution puts Tennessee 'on singular footing'," they continued, as she would be the first person the state “executes in the modern death penalty era who was a teenager at the time of the offence”.

The clemency request was different from Pike's court appeals.

While a court considers whether there have been legal or constitutional errors, clemency gives the governor the power to reduce or alter a sentence. Tennessee's Board of Parole can make recommendations, but the governor has the final authority on clemency.

That means Lee's decision has closed off the executive route Pike's lawyers had been pursuing.

Tennessee has already made preparations for the execution, including selecting official media witnesses.

What has Pike said about her execution?

Pike has also made it clear that she does not want those closest to her to witness her death.

Pike's execution has been scheduled for this week (Tennessee Department of Corrections)

According to her friend Ashlee Sellars, Pike recently told her loved ones she did not want them to experience her execution.

"She doesn't want us to experience that," Sellars claimed earlier this week.

Sellars, who met Pike while both were incarcerated, has previously spoken about the difficulty of reconciling the woman she knows today with the crime she committed as a teenager.

"People want to know that everyone's life matters, right? They want to know that Colleen's life mattered," Sellars said. "Christa, in this moment, I think she is fighting much more for her life to matter than she is to actually live."

Pike has also spoken publicly about her remorse for what happened to Slemmer.

In the documentary Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee, she said: "I’ve always felt bad for her mother, that I took someone’s child, someone’s sister, someone’s friend away. I feel remarkably remorseful for what I did."

Slemmer's mother, meanwhile, has previously said she wants Pike's execution to go ahead so that her daughter can finally rest.