Tennessee will execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years if the scheduled execution of Christa Gail Pike goes ahead. The 50-year-old inmate is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30 at Riverbend State Prison in Nashville.
The execution has not yet taken place. The Tennessee Department of Prisons has scheduled the procedure for 10 a.m. local time. If it takes place, Pike would be the first woman executed in the state since 1820. The data was cited by the Associated Press and the Death Penalty Information Center.
Latest attempts to stop the sentence failed
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee refused to pardon Pike on September 28. He said that after reviewing the case, he would not intervene and would uphold the state's sentence. On September 29, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected both the request to stop the execution and the petition for a review of the case.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old girl“, Pike said in a statement included in her clemency application. She indicated that over time she realized the consequences of what she had done and that the thought of the crime made her sick. The Supreme Court's decision was published in its official record, and the governor's refusal was confirmed by the Death Penalty Information Center.
The murder took place in 1995.
Pike was 18 when she was convicted in 1995 of the murder of a 19-year-old Job Corps classmate in Knoxville. Prosecutors say Pike considered the girl a rival because of her relationship with her then-boyfriend. The two were found guilty of the attack.
The case received national attention because of the brutality of the crime and because of the pentagram carved into the victim's body. Pike is the only one of the participants to receive the death penalty. Her boyfriend, who was 17 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, and the third participant received probation.
Defense cites difficult childhood and mental health issues
Pike's lawyers argue that in the original trial, jurors were not given enough information about her experiences of sexual abuse, neglect and mental health issues. The defense argues that her age at the time of the crime and the development of the adolescent brain should also have been taken into account.
Attorney Stephen Ferrell called the sentence an exception to other cases of people sentenced to death for crimes committed at the age of 18. Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that if the case were heard today and jurors had known about the documented abuses, the outcome would likely have been different. These are the positions of the defense and the organization, not new facts established by the court in the case.
Executions of women are rare in the United States. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 18 women have been executed, which is about one percent of all death sentences carried out in the country. If the procedure in Tennessee is carried out, Pike would also be the first person in the modern history of the state to be executed for a crime committed at the age of 18.
Sources: tn.gov, supremecourt.gov, apnews.com