Tennessee Governor Bill Lee indicated that Christa Pike's death sentence will likely stand, despite the state's botched lethal injection execution on September 30, after which Pike returned to prison. Pike, 50, survived the state's attempt to execute her, raising questions about future legal actions.
"I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before unless determined otherwise by the courts," Lee stated Wednesday. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow participant in a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville.
A former Knoxville police chief who investigated Slemmer's murder recalled Pike's demeanor during interrogation as "ruthless" and "almost giddy" while describing the crime, according to an interview for a New York Post documentary. The chief, Phil Keith, described Pike in two words: "Pure evil."
Keith recounted that Pike openly discussed the killing after returning to the Job Corps. "Pike, when she got back, you know, immediately had to express her joy with killing Colleen," Keith said in the documentary. "And then the very next day in class, she bragged again, talking about how she killed Colleen. She showed her shoes that had blood on them."
Pike was 18 when she, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and Shadolla Peterson were charged in Slemmer's killing. The group reportedly took Slemmer to a secluded area on the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus, where her throat was cut multiple times, she was struck in the head, and a pentagram was carved into her chest. Pike later confessed to her role in the murder.
Keith described the brutality of the crime scene as shocking, even to veteran investigators. "You know, the visual scene of it, it was so shocking," he added.
Pike was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996. The Tennessee Supreme Court later affirmed her convictions and sentence. On September 30, after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay, Tennessee attempted to carry out the sentence. The execution failed after Pike received two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, and she was transported to a hospital.
Initially unconscious for days, her attorneys at one point believed she might be brain-dead. Pike eventually regained consciousness and was discharged from the hospital before being returned to prison. Her attorneys have since stated she is now able to walk and speak in full sentences.
Following the failed execution, Governor Lee halted Tennessee's remaining executions for the year and ordered an independent review of the incident. Pike's attorneys have called on Lee to commute her death sentence to life without parole and have argued she should not face another execution attempt. A previous filing in 2021 by her attorneys seeking commutation cited her age at the time of the murder, as well as a history of childhood trauma, mental illness, and brain damage.