Tennesse woman, Christa Pike, makes special request days before execution

Christa Pike has “horrible nightmares.” Her “nerves are shredded.”In eight days, the 50-year-old who killed her friend when she was a teenager will have her worst nightmares realized inside the execution chamber in Nashville, Tennessee.Pike is set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819 if Governor Bill Lee does not put a stop to the scheduled execution before 10 a.m.local time on September 30.Her lawyers, who filed a 226-page clemency petition, are still waiting for a last-minute reprieve.In the meantime, Pike is “terrified” of the prospect of a painful death by lethal injection.Under the state’s updated lethal injection protocol, a single-drug chemical dose of pentobarbital will enter her system while she is strapped to a gurney.In the event that she is not spared from execution, Pike has made a special request.

She wants an all-female execution squad to carry out the procedure in front of witnesses, including the family of her victim.The reason, her lawyers say, is that she has post-traumatic stress disorder from the widely documented abuse she suffered at the hands of men as a young girl, including when she was just two years old.They also say her death by lethal injection will be “prolonged and agonizing” because she has a rare blood disorder that could make finding a vein more difficult and affect the way she reacts to the drug.So afraid is Pike of the execution being carried out by lethal injection that she took the state to court in August to ask that she be hanged instead.“(Lethal injection administered by men) will increase the likelihood that an 8th Amendment violation will occur,” Pike’s lawyer Stephen Ferrell said in reference to cruel and unusual punishment.“There is an increased risk of pain and suffering.”Pike’s ultimate goal is to take execution off the table completely, and to instead be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.The state’s legal team has been unequivocal a...