Tennessee is set to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years, tell me about this news in (https://www.kcci.com/article/tennessee-christa-pike-woman-execution/73929282)

Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christa Pike, making her the first woman put to death in the state in over 200 years.

Death Penalty Information Center

Christa Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville when Pike was 18 years old. Prosecutors stated that Pike, driven by jealousy, lured Slemmer to a secluded area where she and her co-defendants tortured and killed her.

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Pike’s upcoming execution has drawn significant attention and legal challenges from her defense team and advocates. Her attorneys have sought a stay of execution and clemency, emphasizing her severe background of childhood trauma, extreme abuse, and untreated mental illness. They argue that her death sentence is disproportionatenoting that her co-defendant, who was 17 at the time and thus legally exempt from the death penalty due to his age, received a life sentence with the possibility of paroleand that modern scientific understandings of adolescent brain development should be taken into account. Meanwhile, Governor Bill Lee declined to grant clemency, and the victim’s family has pushed for the sentence to be carried out after decades of waiting.

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