KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — The lawyers for the only woman on Tennessee’s death row have filed a motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court, arguing that the state is not equipped to carry out her execution constitutionally, especially following the botched execution of Tony Carruthers.
Christa Pike received the death sentence at 18 for the 1995 torture slaying of Colleen Slemmer, who was a fellow Knoxville Job Corps student. Slemmer, 18, was stabbed and beaten by Pike and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend at the time, on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus. She is scheduled to be executed by September 30, 2026.
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The new motion by her legal team argues that Pike suffers from “unique physical, medical, and psychological conditions” that should prevent her execution, as it would result in a torturous death and violate the Tennessee Constitution as well as the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. According to her attorneys, Pike suffered physical and sexual abuse and neglect as a child, and she suffers from bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years after her arrest. Her attorneys argue that these conditions will cause her to relive traumatic experiences during the required solitary confinement and move to the men’s prison during her death watch.
“For a woman who was abandoned, repeatedly sexually and physically violated, and unprotected throughout her childhood … the deliberate withdrawal of human connection in her final hours is not neutral. It replicates, with harsh precision, the abandonment she has known her entire life,” said Dr. Bethany Brand, a clinical psychologist familiar with Pike’s case. “What the protocol describes as a routine procedure will, for her, be experienced as a precise replication of the worst moments of her life.”
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Her legal team added that medical professionals have had trouble finding a suitable vein for blood draws, which will make finding a vein for the two IV lines required for the execution difficult. They referenced the attempted execution of Carruthers, which had to be called off after a second IV line could not be successfully placed…