Death row inmate Christa Pike refuses final meal ahead of execution
Death row inmate Christa Pike, who is set to be executed on Wednesday (30 September), has declined a request for a final meal.
The 50-year-old woman will be the first woman to be executed in the state of Tennessee in 200 years for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
She was sentenced to the death penalty when she was just 20-years-old and has spent the last three decades awaiting her execution.
In a recently shared letter, Pike said she has made peace with her fate.
Advert
"Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace," she wrote.
"I'm not afraid to die."
Ahead of her execution, which is scheduled for 11am local time on Wednesday, Pike was offered a final meal but refused to select one, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
Depending on the state, death row inmates can be offered a customised final meal - different from what’s served to other prisoners - before their execution.
Last month, Anthony Darrell Hines was executed via lethal injection in Tennessee and requested a final meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, a chicken sandwich, corn, coleslaw, fries, biscuits and sweet tea.
Pike’s refusal of her final meal comes as the US Supreme Court declined to stop her execution.
Her legal team had hoped for a last-minute reprieve but that has now been turned down, meaning the execution will go ahead.
Pike was just 18 when, on 12 January 1995, she, her then-boyfriend and another friend lured Colleen Slemmer to a secluded woodland in Knoxville.
According to court documents, Pike and her boyfriend then brutally attacked Slemmer, while the friend kept watch.
The beating lasted around 30 minutes, and saw the boyfriend carve a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, before Pike then killed the 19-year-old by delivering a fatal blow to the head, court documents claimed.
Allegedly motivated by the suggestion that Colleen was trying to 'steal' her boyfriend, Pike then took a piece of her skull back to campus.
Pike's lawyers have since argued that she should've been given life in prison, arguing that her childhood issues, age and mental health problems were all mitigating factors in the case.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said she was abused as a child and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.
In her clemency petition, Pike wrote: “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. 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 Death Penalty Information Center told WPLN that death sentences for crime committed by those aged 18-20 have become ‘increasingly rare’ in recent times.
In a statement, Robin M. Maher, executive director of The Death Penalty Information Center said: “If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death.”
Topics: US News, Crime, Death Row, True Crime
Claire Reid