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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BFMG) — Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, has declined to select a special last meal ahead of her scheduled execution Wednesday, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Tennessee offers inmates facing execution the opportunity to request a special meal within established limits. Pike chose not to make a selection.
Pike, 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If the execution proceeds, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Gov. Bill Lee said Monday he would not intervene, following calls from Pike’s attorneys and advocates to commute her sentence.
Pike was convicted in 1996 of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer the previous year on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. Both were participants in Job Corps, a federal job training program.
Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. Prosecutors said she acted with two others, Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson, in the attack.
The case drew national attention because of the brutality of Slemmer’s death. Trial evidence showed Slemmer was beaten and cut, a pentagram was carved into her chest, and Pike kept a fragment of her skull.
In seeking clemency, Pike’s legal team asked Lee to reduce her sentence to life in prison without parole. Her attorneys and supporters cited her age at the time of the crime, mental health concerns and a history of severe childhood abuse as reasons to spare her life.
