TENNESSEE IS SET TO EXECUTE CHRISTA PIKE ON SEPTEMBER 30 — and now her attorneys are asking the governor to spare her life because she was only 18 when she committed the crime.
But before anyone decides that means Pike deserves mercy, remember what happened to her victim, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Prosecutors said Pike helped lure Colleen to an isolated area, where she was tortured, beaten, slashed and ultimately brutally k*lled with a chunk of asphalt. Pike carved a pentagram into her chest and kept a piece of her skull afterward as a souvenir.
Now Pike is 50 years old, and her attorneys are asking Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole.
More than three decades have passed, but the brutality of this crime has not changed with time, and the victim should not become an afterthought simply because the woman convicted of killing her has gotten older.
Pike’s attorneys are asking Tennessee for mercy. Is this an argument for a different punishment? Or does this make the case for more swift executions when someone is sentenced to the death penalty?