Christa Gail Pike has refused a last meal after the Tennessee death row inmate lost her final legal effort to stop an execution stemming from a murder she committed when she was 18.
Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday morning for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. The Tennessee Department of Correction said Pike declined a last meal after Governor Bill Lee rejected her request for clemency and the US Supreme Court declined to halt the execution.
The Supreme Court’s decision came less than a day before the deadline to stop the execution. The justices did not provide an explanation for their decision, according to The Hill.
Lee said he reached his decision after reviewing Pike’s clemency request and the circumstances of the case.
“After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case,” Lee said, he decided not to intervene.
Pike’s attorneys said they were “deeply saddened and heartbroken” by the governor’s decision and argued that carrying out the execution would place Tennessee in a significant position in its modern death penalty history.
Her lawyers said Pike would become the first person executed by Tennessee in the modern era who was a teenager when the crime was committed. They also said she would be the first woman executed by the state in more than two centuries.
The case dates back to January 1995, when Pike was 18 and Slemmer was 19. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was romantically interested in her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and regarded her as a rival.
According to prosecutors, Pike and Shipp lured Slemmer to a secluded area, where they tortured and killed her. Pike was subsequently convicted of the murder and sentenced to death.
The circumstances surrounding the killing have remained central to the case as Pike’s attorneys sought to prevent the execution. Her age at the time of the offense has been particularly significant in the legal and clemency arguments surrounding her sentence.
Pike’s scheduled execution also places renewed attention on Tennessee’s use of the death penalty and the distinction between crimes committed by adults and those committed by people who are still teenagers. Pike was legally an adult at 18 when Slemmer was killed, but her lawyers have emphasized her age at the time of the offense in seeking clemency.
The rejection of Pike’s final appeals leaves the execution scheduled to proceed unless another legal intervention occurs.
For Slemmer’s family, the case has stretched across more than three decades since her death. For Pike, the final legal avenues available to challenge the execution have now been exhausted, leaving clemency and last-minute court intervention as the remaining mechanisms capable of stopping it.
Pike’s refusal of a last meal comes as the case reaches its final stage, more than 30 years after the murder that put her on Tennessee’s death row.
