Youngest Woman to be Sentenced to Death in US is Pleading for Her Punishment to be Vacated Nearly 30 Years Later

In 1995, 18-year-old Christa Gail Pike became the youngest woman in the U.S. at the time to get the death penalty since 1972, convicted for killing another teen on a college campus. Now, nearly 30 years later, she is pleading for her life to be spared.

Attorneys for the Tennessee woman are asking a court to vacate her sentence, citing a recent state Supreme Court ruling that juveniles are "constitutionally different than adults" and that judges should have discretion in meting out punishment for young offenders, according to WBIR 10.

Pike, now 45, was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Colleen Slemmer, 19, on the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus in Knoxville with two others.

Christa Gail Pike is asking the court to vacate the death sentence she was given when she was 18. Tennessee State Police

Lawyers for Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee, filed a motion on Wednesday asking the court to reconsider her death sentence and pointing to recent rulings, including a 2022 decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court that said mandatory life sentences for juveniles in homicide cases are unconstitutional, the station reported.

"If Christa is executed for a crime she committed as a teenager, it will contradict Tennessee’s deeply held beliefs in the value of human life and redemption, as well as the scientific consensus that youthful brains are not fully formed, especially for young people who experience severe abuse, neglect and trauma,” attorney Kelly Gleason wrote in the 26-page petition, WBIR reported.

“It will demonstrate the cruel reality of Tennessee’s arbitrary death scheme," he added.

Pike's legal team also said she experienced "severe, repeated physical and sexual abuse, rapes, and violence from a very young age."

Prosecutors said Pike, her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and another friend, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to meet them with promises to smoke marijuana.

Pike and Shipp tortured and beat Slemmer, cutting a pentagram in her chest, and Pike smashed Slemmer's head with a piece of asphalt, WBIR reported.

Shipp, then 17, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus 25 years, while Peterson, then 19, was sentenced to probation after assisting in the prosecution case against Pike and Shipp, WJHL reported.

In August 2004, Pike was convicted of attempted first-degree muder for trying to choke a fellow inmate to death with a shoestring, the station reported.

No date has been set for Pike's execution.