In the last 50 years, the U.S. has put more than 1,600 people to death, but only about 1 percent of those executed have been women. That’s not because of lingering cultural stereotypes, but because, as law professor Elizabeth Rappaport has explained, women “rarely commit the specific predatory murders that lead to death sentences.”
There is little doubt that Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, committed such a murder. At age 18, along with two others, Pike tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer in 1995. She later bragged to others “that she had cut the teenager’s throat six times with a box cutter, cut her back with a meat cleaver, and carved a pentagram into her chest. The three killers continued even as Slemmer ‘begged’ them to stop.”
Pike, due to be executed later this year, is suing to prevent the Volunteer State from executing her, and not because she is a woman. Pike alleges that Tennessee’s execution protocol, “calling for single drug (pentobarbital), is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades.”…