Convicted killer Christa Gail Pike is asking a federal court to bar the state from killing her.
Having exhausted — for now, at least — state court appeals, Pike is now turning to U.S. District Court in what is proving an 18-year battle to escape death row for the 1995 slaying of romantic rival Colleen Slemmer at the now-defunct Job Corps training program for troubled youth, then in Fort Sanders.
In a 123-page petition filed on Pike's behalf, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen A. Ferrell lists a host of reasons why Pike's constitutional rights were violated in both the 1996 trial in Knox County Criminal Court and penalty phase and those violations ignored by Tennessee's appellate courts.
Among them is a claim that executing Pike via lethal injection would amount to "cruel and unusual punishment" because she was "a mentally ill, cognitively impaired, immature adolescent" at the time of the killing.
No comments:
Post a Comment