https://www.mercyforchrista.org/petition

Dear Governor Lee,

We are writing on behalf of Christa Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee. Christa committed her crime in 1995 as an 18-year-old girl with severe, untreated mental illness. Christa acknowledges that “there is no excuse for what I did…. I take full responsibility for my actions, and regret everything that happened” on the night she and two other teenagers killed Colleen Slemmer after an argument spiraled out of control.

We ask you to extend mercy to Christa. The Tennessee Constitution empowers you, and only you, with the authority to commute her sentence to life in prison. We ask that you act to prevent Christa’s execution, which would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.

We ask for mercy because:

• Christa is reported to be the youngest woman sentenced to death in the United States in the modern era. Since Christa’s conviction, scientists have determined that the brain does not fully develop until individuals have reached their mid-20s. At the age of 18, Christa’s brain development was no different from that of a juvenile, and her execution would be wrong for the same reasons that it is wrong (and unconstitutional) to execute juvenile offenders.

• Christa experienced severe, repeated physical and sexual abuse, violence, and neglect as a child. By the time Christa was 18, she had been raped twice. She bears a network of scars on her back from childhood beatings. This childhood trauma left her with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

• Christa was born with organic brain damage. Despite suicide attempts and mental illness symptoms, Christa did not receive proper psychological or medical care as a child. In fact, Christa was untreated for Bipolar Disorder and severe PTSD until years after she was imprisoned. The psychiatrist who began treating her for Bipolar Disorder in 2002 found marked improvement upon medication for the illness she had suffered since her early teens.

• Life imprisonment is a proper punishment for Christa, just as it is for the nearly 200 women convicted of first degree murder who did not receive death in Tennessee since 1978. Executing Christa is not proportionate in light of the disparity between her sentence and co-defendant Tadaryl Shipp’s. Christa was in an abusive relationship with Tadaryl at the time of the crime, and he was a leader in the offense. But since he was a year younger, he was exempt from capital punishment and will be eligible for parole in 2027.

• Christa’s state-appointed lawyers failed to present the mitigating evidence of her history as a victim of sexual violence, abuse, and neglect and her severe mental illness to the jury. The jurors were deprived of the ability to determine the proper sentence in the absence of this critical information.

While Christa’s adverse childhood experiences and mental health issues do not excuse what she did, they offer powerful mitigation and explanation for her actions that fateful evening. The act of granting clemency, or giving mercy, is an essential component of our criminal justice system in the United States. We ask that you show Christa mercy and commute her sentence so that she spends the rest of her life in prison but does not die at the hands of the executioner.