Christa Pike’s death row appeal included allegations of severe childhood abuse and neglect, according to court documents from earlier proceedings in her murder case. Her challenge to the sentence has so far failed, and she is currently in hospital in Tennessee after surviving two lethal injections.
Pike was seeking to have her death sentence overturned on the grounds that she had received ineffective assistance from her lawyers. Her legal team argued that the court had not properly considered the abuse she said she experienced during childhood.
Christa Pike’s death row appeal
She alleged that she had been sexually abused by several men, including being raped by four different men and abused by another. Pike also claimed she was sexually abused as a toddler.
In one account, she said she was locked inside a chicken coop in the dark and left alone while spiders crawled over her skin. She further claimed to have been violently assaulted and raped about a year before the killing for which she was convicted.
Pike’s lawyers argued that prosecutors had portrayed her as an “out-of-control” teenager when presenting the case against her. She was convicted of murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995 during what prosecutors said was a jealous rage over a boy.
They also referred to an incident in which Pike attacked her mother’s boyfriend with a butcher knife. Pike said prosecutors had failed to mention that the man had been wrestling with her and pinching her nipples.
Her legal team additionally claimed that Pike had been physically abused by her father. He denied the allegations, while Pike maintained that photographs produced after the trial showed visible scars which she said resulted from the abuse.
Pike also described time spent in juvenile facilities, saying that the “semblance of continuity and stability actually caused her to sabotage her own chances of going home”.
Her efforts to leave death row have not succeeded. After being injected with two lethal doses on Wednesday, she did not die and remains hospitalised in Tennessee.
