US4 min(s) read
Death row inmate suffered 'excruciating’ execution after last meal 'mistake' as Christa Pike makes major decision about hers
.jpg_xKEaT0?tr=cr-0.328.2730.3058,f-webp,q-70,w-100)
Christa Gail Pike, 50, will face the death penalty later today (September 30), having already made a huge move ahead of her execution.
The Tennessee inmate has been on death row for 30 years since murdering fellow student Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Pike's legal team has repeatedly tried to avoid her undergoing the death penalty, citing her mental health and religion as reasons against it.
She is still the only woman on death row in Tennessee, after being convicted of the horrific murder when she was just 20.
Pike will become the first woman to be executed in the state for 200 years, with the lethal injection being administered.
Her calls for clemency were rejected, and the sentence will be carried out at 10:00AM CDT at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
But Pike showed her discontent after losing a final effort to swerve her fate.
Christa Pike refuses final meal
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, Pike is refusing a last meal following the decision by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to deny her clemency request.
Tennessee is one of a few states that still offers inmates on death row the chance to make a special selection for their last meal, within a set of rules.
The US Supreme Court declined to stay the execution, having made the decision less than one day prior to the deadline, with no explanation given.
Governor Lee said he decided against getting involved in the case 'after deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike's request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case.'
Pike murdered her classmate with a box cutter, a cleaver, and a piece of asphalt after becoming jealous over her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, 17, believing Slemmer was interested in him.
She also disturbingly cut her throat and carved satanic symbols onto her body, while keeping a fragment of her skull.
Years on, her lawyers said they were 'heartbroken' by the governor's decision, telling Fox 17: "Moving ahead with her execution puts the State of Tennessee on singular footing,
"Christa will be the first person Tennessee executes in the modern death penalty era who was a teenager at the time of the offense, and the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years."
But when it comes to giving a final meal a miss, Pike isn't alone in the bizarre decision.
Death row inmate refused final meal for odd reason
Wesley Ira Purkey was 68 years old when he was executed via lethal injection in 2020, 16 years on from being placed on death row for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 16-year-old schoolgirl Jennifer Long in 1998.
When his time on death row came to an end, Purkey - who was said to be suffering from dementia - had reportedly requested pecan pie as his last meal, asking to save it for later.
Though he mistakenly did not realize that there would not be a "later" for him.
Purkey had reportedly lured the teenager into his pick-up truck outside a grocery store. He then drove her to his home before raping and fatally stabbing her.
He used a chainsaw to dismember the body, partially burning her remains in a fireplace before he buried her in a septic pond in Clearwater, Kansas.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, her remains have never been found.
The former inmate also beat 80-year-old polio sufferer Mary Bales to death with a claw hammer.
He had been to Mary's home to fix a kitchen tap when he carried out the murder. He was arrested after neighbors saw him attempting to burn Mary's body.
He would be sentenced to death for his crimes on January 23, 2004.
After he was executed by lethal injection, Purkey's autopsy revealed that he suffered "severe bilateral acute pulmonary oedema" and "frothy pulmonary oedema in trachea and main stem bronchi".
This essentially meant that fluid quickly entered his lungs and trachea, causing "a near-drowning" sensation, which a medical expert described as "among the most excruciating feelings known to man".