The only woman on death row in the state of Tennessee, Christa Gail Pike, is currently suing the state over the method of her upcoming execution.
Pike, convicted of a 1995 murder, alleges that the lethal injection violates her rights and religious beliefs.
Christa Gail Pike committed a violent murder back in 1995
In 1996, Pike was among three people convicted of the murder of Colleen Slemmer in an incident that became known locally as the ‘Jobs Corps Murder’.
Pike and her boyfriend Tiddell Shipp, as well as friend Shadolla Peterson, faced prosecution together.
Pike was convicted of smashing Slemmer’s head with a block of asphalt and accused of keeping a piece of the dead girl’s skull as a souvenir of the murder.
She was sentenced to death for her crimes, but her sentence has yet to be carried out and she remains on death row, from where she has now brought a lawsuit against the State of Tennessee.
The date for her execution was recently set for September 30.
She would become the first woman executed in Tennessee for over 200 years.
Pike's suit, filed on January 8, is against Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction Frank Strada, and the wardens of Riverbend Maximum Security Prison and Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.
Pike alleges that the method of execution used in the state, lethal injection, can bring on what is known as a flash pulmonary edema, which can cause a drowning sensation.
She argues that because of a ‘severe medical condition’ using this method will ‘very likely produce an even more severe pattern of bloody froth in the lungs.’
The suit alleges: “This is death by drowning on one’s own blood.”
The suit also claims that being unresponsive is not the same as being unconscious, and that the injection can cause extreme pain, as well as terror.
Pike’s suit claims that this method is ‘very likely to result in unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace in violation of the United States Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution.’
She claims to have ‘unique medical conditions’ and the lack of a contingency plan for botched execution make her proposed killing unconstitutional.
The legal documents also claim that ‘any alternative method pleading requirement violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment’ as it ‘violates her rights to conscience and/or to the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.’
This is because Pike is a practising Buddhist and - the suit claims - an ‘alternative method violates her sincerely held religious beliefs against participating in any process leading to her own death.’
What else does Christa Pike want?
In the lawsuit, she asks for the method of execution to be declared unconstitutional and a permanent injunction put in place on the use of lethal injection.
She also asks for a contingency plan in the result of an execution going wrong, as well as for life-saving medical procedures to be brought in if death has not occurred after five minutes.
She argues against a 14 day isolation period, as well as for a temporary injuction being put in place to stop her execution until the resolution of two other cases from 2018 and 2019 that she has asked for equal protection of the laws and orders over.
As for Slemmer’s family, they continue to be outspoken for justice.
Her mother May Martinez has frequently told reporters that she wants to see justice for her daughter, and her hopes that no parent has to endure what she has endured over the years.
If executed on September 30th, Pike would become the first woman killed by the state of Tennessee in over 200 years.