Tennessee prepares to execute first female inmate in more than two centuries

Tennessee is preparing to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years after Gov. Bill Lee declined to grant clemency to death row inmate Christa Pike.

Pike, 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at Knoxville Job Corps.

Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted in Slemmer’s killing. Prosecutors said Slemmer was lured to a secluded area before being tortured and killed.

Pike does not deny responsibility, but her lawyers argue the death sentence is inappropriate given her age at the time, history of severe childhood abuse and later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in her clemency petition.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, supports the execution, saying her daughter was also young and never had the opportunity to grow older.

Pike’s lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to halt the execution.

If it proceeds, Pike would become the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.