Sole Woman on Tennessee Death Row, Age 18 at Time of Crime, Raises New Appeal Based on Youthfulness

Attorneys for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a motion on August 30 to re-open her appeals based on a recent deci­sion from the Tennessee Supreme Court. In 2022, the Court ruled in State v. Booker that manda­to­ry life sen­tences in homi­cide cas­es are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al when imposed on juve­niles, draw­ing on U.S. Supreme Court prece­dent that held that juve­niles are less mature, more vul­ner­a­ble to peer pres­sure, and gen­er­al­ly less cul­pa­ble than adults. Ms. Pike’s attor­neys argue that Booker​’s rea­son­ing applies to all youth­ful defen­dants, not just minors. Ms. Pike was 18 when she par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mur­der of Colleen Slemmer in 1995. ​“If the courts agree that a 17-year-old is not eli­gi­ble for manda­to­ry life in prison due to well-estab­lished ado­les­cent brain sci­ence, we should not death-sen­tence an 18-year-old,” said Kelly Gleason, an attor­ney for Ms. Pike. ​“There is no hard line of matu­ri­ty or dif­fer­ence between the brain devel­op­ment of a 17-year-old and 18-year-old.” Trauma psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Bethany Brand, who exam­ined Ms. Pike, stat­ed that Ms. Pike expe­ri­enced ​“one of the most trag­ic and pro­found chron­ic abuse his­to­ries” Dr. Brand had encoun­tered in her line of work. Ms. Gleason argued that exe­cut­ing Ms. Pike for a crime she com­mit­ted as a teenag­er would ​“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.”

The age cut­off cre­at­ed a sen­tenc­ing dis­par­i­ty in Ms. Pike’s own case. Her co-defen­dant Tadaryl Shipp, whom courts deemed equal­ly cul­pa­ble for the mur­der, received life in prison with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole because he was 17 at the time of the crime. Mr. Shipp is only a few months younger than Ms. Pike and will be eli­gi­ble for parole in 2026. In a 2019 rul­ing in Ms. Pike’s case, Sixth Circuit Judge Jane Stranch wrote that the exe­cu­tion of a per­son who was 18 at the time of the offense is like­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but that lim­i­ta­tions on fed­er­al review of state crim­i­nal cas­es pre­vent habeas courts from grant­i­ng relief on those grounds. 

Ms. Pike’s case is a sta­tis­ti­cal out­lier in sev­er­al ways. Sentenced in 1996, she is among the youngest women in the United States to receive the death penal­ty in the mod­ern era. She is the last per­son in Tennessee sen­tenced to death for a crime com­mit­ted at age 18, and would be the first per­son exe­cut­ed in Tennessee for a crime com­mit­ted at 18 since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976. All eight men sen­tenced to death for a crime com­mit­ted at age 18 in Tennessee lat­er had their sen­tences vacat­ed. If her appeals fail, Ms. Pike would be the first woman exe­cut­ed in Tennessee in over two centuries. 

Ms. Pike has also filed a sep­a­rate law­suit against the Tennessee Department of Corrections based on her iso­la­tion as the only woman on the state’s death row, argu­ing that she has been kept in func­tion­al soli­tary con­fine­ment for over 25 years. Men on Tennessee’s death row are seg­re­gat­ed from non-cap­i­tal pris­on­ers, but social­ize and work togeth­er. The com­plaint alleges that by con­trast, because she is the only woman, Ms. Pike has had ​“no social engage­ment with oth­er incar­cer­at­ed indi­vid­u­als or prison staff, no edu­ca­tion­al or reli­gious pro­gram­ming, and near­ly no phys­i­cal con­tact with anoth­er human being.” The last woman sen­tenced to death in Tennessee besides Ms. Pike, Gaile Owens, was per­mit­ted to live among the prison’s gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion before she was released in 2010. Attorneys Brian Roark and Angie Bergman, who rep­re­sent Ms. Pike in her civ­il case, argue that Tennessee’s pol­i­cy of seg­re­gat­ing death row pris­on­ers does not make sense as applied to women, and has exac­er­bat­ed Ms. Pike’s exist­ing men­tal health con­di­tions. They shared that Ms. Pike ​“filed this law­suit to be able to share a meal, par­tic­i­pate in group ther­a­py, work at a job, or have some min­i­mal inter­ac­tion with others.”