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Final message of death row inmate set to become first woman killed by US state in 200 years tomorrow
Christa Pike, who is set to become the first woman to be executed on death row in Tennessee in over 200 years tomorrow, has given her final message.
The 50-year-old will be given the lethal injection on Wednesday, September 30, having been handed the death penalty for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Slemmer's final message ahead of execution
Pike, who has heavily contested both her conviction and the method in which she is set to be executed, has issued her final words, claiming that she is “at peace,” just a day before becoming the first woman since 1819 to be executed in Tennessee.
In her letter to NBC News, Pike wrote: “Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace.”
This comes after Pike’s lawyers launched a last-ditch effort to have her conviction overturned, having submitted a clemency petition challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty.
In the 226-page document, Pike’s lawyers argued that the death sentence should be overturned in favor of life imprisonment without parole, citing Pike’s medical conditions as reasons to reverse the decision to put her to death.
Pike told NBC News, “I am not afraid to die. I’m only nervous about the process.”
According to her lawyers and experts, her condition could complicate the lethal injection procedure and make it more painstaking than it should be.
Pike has also requested that she be taken to the gurney by female prison staff, and that those who are presiding over her execution are also female, due to post-traumatic stress disorder, having been sexually abused as a young child.
Pike's murder of Slemmer
The 50-year-old was just 18 when she murdered fellow US Job Corps student, Slemmer, having believed that she was interested in her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.
Pike, along with Shipp and another accomplice, carried out the brutal murder in 1995, cutting Slemmer’s neck, beating her, and engraving satanic symbols into her skin, before removing a piece of her skull, which Pike kept.
While Shipp, who was not legally considered an adult at the time, was sentenced to life imprisonment, Pike was given the death penalty and has awaited her date for over 30 years, with it officially set for Wednesday should her appeal be dismissed by authorities.