Christa Pike, a Tennessee death-row inmate scheduled to be executed Wednesday, says she sees a connection between her own case and that of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother whose murder trial ended in a mistrial.
Pike, 50, discussed Clancy in a written interview conducted through her attorneys and published by The Times. She said the two women were “both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,” while arguing that many women do not receive the help they need.
“There are so many women who don’t get the help they need,” Pike said.
Pike also acknowledged that public awareness surrounding women's mental health and other issues has changed considerably since she was prosecuted.
“One thing is different, however, is that times have changed a lot on awareness of women’s issues since I was put on trial,” she said.
Pike said she was “pleased” that Clancy's case ended in a mistrial after a juror declined to join the defense's position. Clancy had been charged in the deaths of her three young children, though the case did not result in a verdict.
Pike's own case dates back more than three decades.
In 1995, when she was 18, Pike lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to an abandoned steam plant at the University of Tennessee. Prosecutors said Pike and two male accomplices attacked Slemmer, torturing and beating her before killing her.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
Her execution would make her the first woman put to death by lethal injection in Tennessee in more than two centuries, according to NBC News. Tennessee's last execution of a woman was in 1820, when Ann H. Williams was hanged.
Pike's case has drawn renewed attention because executions of women in the United States are comparatively rare. Her scheduled execution also comes after years of appeals and legal proceedings surrounding her conviction and sentence.
The comparison she draws with Clancy is ultimately Pike's own characterization. The two cases involve substantially different circumstances, charges and procedural histories, and Pike's comments do not establish that the underlying causes or legal issues in the cases were the same.
What connects them in Pike's telling is her broader argument about women who experience serious personal or psychological difficulties and whether they receive adequate intervention before those difficulties contribute to devastating outcomes.
Her execution is now set to place Tennessee's death penalty back under national scrutiny, while Pike's remarks have added another layer to a case that has remained in the public eye since Slemmer's killing more than 30 years ago.
