Tennessee denies clemency for Christa Pike ahead of Wednesday execution

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee denied clemency for Christa Pike on Monday, upholding her death sentence: "After deliberate consideration... I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene." Pike, 50, was scheduled for lethal injection at 10 a.m. Wednesday, September 30, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her fellow Knoxville Job Corps student. Pike was 18 at the time — the youngest age at which a death sentence can be imposed.

Had it gone forward, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years and the first person executed in the state's modern era for a crime committed at 18. Her clemency petition cited severe childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and untreated mental illness, backed by more than 100 advocacy groups; the Tennessee Supreme Court declined a stay on September 23. Her attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Slemmer's mother supports the execution going forward.

Sources: The Tennessean, USA Today.