Christa Pike Could Have Taken a Plea Deal to Live. Why Was She Told Not To?

Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30, which would make her the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Her legal team says the jury that sentenced her to death in 1996 never heard the full story of her life. Pike was 18 years old in 1995 when she and two fellow Job Corps students, including her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, lured 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer into the woods near the University of Tennessee and killed her in a brutal attack that made national headlines. Pike confessed and was sentenced to death; Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. In this episode of Criminally Obsessed, investigative reporter Anne Emerson speaks with Kelly Gleason and Stephen Ferrell, attorneys on Pike's defense team, just days before her scheduled execution. Gleason and Ferrell describe the horrific childhood abuse Pike endured and explain why none of it was ever presented to the jury during the brief, hour-long penalty phase of her trial. They also detail a life-without-parole plea offer prosecutors extended just before trial, which Pike's original attorneys spent only ninety minutes discussing with her before it disappeared. Ferrell and Gleason lay out the clemency petition now sitting on Governor Bill Lee's desk, why they believe Pike's age and immaturity at the time of the crime should matter under the law, and what — if anything — could still stop the execution. For more on this story, watch “Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee” on the Criminally Obsessed YouTube channel.