A scheduled execution in Tennessee came to a stop with roughly an hour to spare this week. Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on the state’s death row, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in two hundred years. A court intervened, and now judges will review whether her claims of childhood sexual abuse and rape were fully considered before she was sentenced to death.
The case dates back to 1995, when 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was tortured and killed on the University of Tennessee campus. The crime became known as the Jobs Corps Murder, since Pike and the two others involved, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, were all Jobs Corps members at the time. Pike was convicted in 1996.
The halt doesn’t settle anything about Pike’s guilt. It resets the question to one specific issue: did her abuse history get a fair hearing before a jury decided on a death sentence? For the Slemmer family here, and for anyone who follows capital cases across the country, the wait continues. What’s your take? Should a history of childhood abuse affect death sentencing? We want to hear from Suncoast listeners.
