2026-09-29T13:00:00-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
作者：艾米丽·梅·查霍尔 新闻编辑
艾米丽·梅·查霍尔是CBSNews.com的记者兼新闻编辑，通常报道突发新闻、极端天气和气候相关内容。她此前曾为《洛杉矶时报》、BuzzFeed和《新闻周刊》等媒体撰稿。
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更新时间：2026年9月29日 / 美国东部夏令时下午3:24 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
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田纳西州定于周三以注射死刑的方式处决死囚中唯一的女性克里斯塔·派克。如果处决按计划执行，派克将成为该州近200年来首位被处决的女性。
“我并不怕死，我只是对行刑过程感到紧张。”派克在田纳西州州长比尔·李周一驳回她的减刑请愿书、为处决扫清道路前写下的一封信中如此写道。
派克在信中感谢那些呼吁州长介入并阻止处决计划的人，并表示无论请愿结果如何，她都“内心平静”。哥伦比亚广播公司新闻从派克的精神顾问迈克·诺埃赫尔牧师处获得了这封信的副本，同时还收到了派克写下的另一张便条，上面抄录了埃德加·爱伦·坡诗歌《致——》的手写诗句。诺埃赫尔称，他在周日收到了这首诗，周一收到了这封信。
现年50岁的派克自1995年起就被监禁，当时她杀害了前同学科琳·斯莱默。根据法庭记录，派克和斯莱默当时都是诺克斯维尔职业培训中心的学生，时年18岁的派克对19岁的斯莱默实施酷刑并将其杀害，据称起因是斯莱默对派克的感情生活发表了评论。
法庭记录显示，派克的男友和另一名朋友协助实施了这场袭击和谋杀。
派克的案件引发了国际关注和一些抗议，联合国近日与当地维权团体一同呼吁李州长将派克的死刑减为终身监禁。
他们的批评主要集中在派克在斯莱默遇害时遭受的童年虐待和未得到治疗的精神疾病。如今，陪审团在量刑决策时会更多考虑这些因素，而派克受审时并非如此。联合国专家还表示，派克作为田纳西州唯一一名等待处决的女性，在死囚区单独监禁数十年，这相当于非法酷刑。
李宣布驳回减刑申请后，派克的律师发表声明称，他们对这一消息“深感悲痛和心碎”。声明中提到，他们的当事人在监禁期间发生了巨大变化。
“那个患有严重精神疾病、近乎被创伤击垮的18岁女孩已经不复存在，”声明写道，“克里斯塔如今是一名50岁、充满悔意的女性，她清楚自己的行为，接受了适当的精神疾病治疗，并为其他在押女性提供支持和指导。”
她的一名律师卢克·伊恩告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻：“她还是一如既往的克里斯塔风格，在最后的日子里，她更担心的是她的朋友、家人和法律团队，而非自己。”
在减刑请愿书中附随的一份声明中，派克表示，她意识到自己的罪行造成的影响“巨大、令人难忘，并毁掉了无数人的生活”。
“我花了很多年才真正意识到自己所作所为的严重性，又花了更久的时间才接受自己影响了多少人的人生，”她说，“我夺走了一个人的生命，她是某个人的孩子、姐妹、朋友。如今一想到自己犯下了这样的罪行，我就感到恶心。”
谋杀定罪
派克最初刑事案件的检察官和陪审员，以及主持审判和多次上诉的法官，都曾将斯莱默的谋杀案描述为残忍且令人发指。斯莱默的母亲梅·马丁内斯在1996年派克被定罪后告诉《诺克斯维尔新闻哨兵报》，她认为派克“邪恶”，州政府“应该立刻处死她”。
派克审判的记录显示，斯莱默在田纳西大学校园的一片林区内，在长达30分钟到1小时的时间里 repeatedly 遭到殴打，并用肉斧和美工刀割伤。
当她的尸体被发现时，头颅有一块缺失，前额和胸口被刻上了五芒星。这些细节引发了媒体的大肆报道，也恰逢上世纪八九十年代席卷美国的“撒旦恐慌”浪潮。其他学生称，派克后来吹嘘自己的杀人行为，还向一名同学透露，她取下并保留了斯莱默缺失的那块头骨作为“纪念品”。
根据法庭记录，案发时派克的男友塔达里尔·希普和朋友沙多拉·彼得森都协助她杀害了斯莱默。由于希普案发时年仅17岁，不符合死刑适用条件，最终被判处终身监禁。他去年的假释申请被驳回，但该案件将于2031年底再次接受审查。彼得森在案发后仅被判处缓刑，因为她在派克的审判中出庭作证指控派克。
青少年量刑争议
尽管派克对罪行供认不讳，但她的法律团队多次提起上诉，质疑她的死刑判决，并提出如果现在审理她的案件，她可能不会被判处死刑。
1996年，20岁的派克被判处死刑，成为美国现代死刑制度下最年轻的女性死囚。如今，如果周三的处决顺利进行，她将成为美国现代死刑制度启动以来，唯一一名在犯罪时年龄为18、19或20岁的被处决囚犯。根据美国早期死刑研究资料，这也将是田纳西州至少自1820年以来首次处决女性。
她的律师表示，派克童年遭受的性虐待、被遗弃和忽视的经历，以及包括创伤后应激障碍、双相情感障碍和先天性脑损伤在内的心理状况，在最初的审判中没有得到充分重视。他们还强调，如果派克在案发时再小几个月，在田纳西州就不会面临死刑指控。
“在判处派克死刑时，我们排除了她的犯罪行为是青少年不成熟头脑所致，而非固定的堕落本性的可能性，”美国联邦巡回法院法官简·斯特兰奇在2018年对派克的一次未成功上诉的附议意见中写道。尽管斯特兰奇支持多数驳回上诉的裁决，但她也承认派克的死刑判决存在争议，写道：“我们假定她无法改过自新，尽管其他青少年杀手的故事——其中许多人在狱中得到了改造——揭示了其他可能性。”
死刑信息中心执行主任罗宾·马赫尔去年告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，全国范围内对死刑的支持率下降，以及对青少年判处死刑的比例降低，都表明如果在当代审理派克的案件，她可能会获得不同的判决。
“自克里斯塔·派克被判处死刑以来，社会对于谁真正 deserves 死刑的看法已经改变，”马赫尔说，“她当时年纪尚轻、患有精神疾病，以及犯罪时遭受的身心虐待，在今天很可能会让陪审团认为她不应该被判处死刑。”
单独监禁
在美国，女性被判处死刑的情况极为罕见，目前全国死囚中女性仅占1%。根据死刑信息中心的数据，在全国约2000名即将被处决的囚犯中，仅有45名女性。该中心发布死刑相关数据，但不对死刑本身持立场。其中17名女性被判处死刑的加利福尼亚州已经暂停执行死刑，已有20多年未处决过囚犯。
在派克入狱的大部分时间里，她都不允许与其他人交流。在她的律师提起的诉讼和上诉中，有一项诉讼称，由于派克在入狱的大部分年份里都是田纳西州死囚区唯一的女性，她的监禁状态相当于单独监禁。法院文件显示，盖尔·欧文斯是唯一一名在那三年里与派克关押在同一监狱的女性，后来她的死刑被减为终身监禁，但两人从未有过接触。
派克的律师在向美国最高法院提起的最新上诉中表示，由于数十年的单独监禁侵犯了派克的宪法权利，该诉讼于2024年以田纳西州与派克达成和解告终，和解内容为她提供了更多与其他在押人员交流的机会。
随着处决日期临近，派克被重新送回单独监禁，田纳西州的注射死刑流程要求在处决前14天对囚犯采取这一措施，她的律师在上诉中称。
What to know about Christa Pike, first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years
2026-09-29T13:00:00-0400 / CBS News
By Emily Mae Czachor News Editor
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and climate. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
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Updated on: September 29, 2026 / 3:24 PM EDT / CBS News
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Tennessee is set to execute Christa Pike, the only woman on its death row, by lethal injection on Wednesday. If the procedure happens as scheduled, Pike would also become the only woman executed in the state in the last 200 years.
“I am not afraid to die. I’m only nervous about the process,” wrote Pike, in a letter she penned before Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee denied her clemency petition on Monday, clearing the way for her execution to take place.
Thanking those who rallied for the governor to intervene and halt the plan, Pike said she was “at peace,” regardless of the outcome of her bid. CBS News obtained a copy of the letter from her spiritual adviser, Rev. Mikey Noechel, along with a copy of another note Noechel received from Pike that contained handwritten lines from the poem “To ——” by Edgar Allan Poe. Noechel said he received the poem on Sunday and the letter on Monday.
Now 50, Pike has been incarcerated since 1995 for the murder that year of her former classmate, Colleen Slemmer. According to court records, Pike and Slemmer were students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville when Pike, then 18, tortured and killed her, allegedly over comments Slemmer, 19, had made about her relationship.
Pike’s boyfriend and another friend helped carry out the attack and murder, the records said.
Christa Pike, in an undated photo released by the Tennessee Department of Correction. Tennessee Department of Correction via AP
Pike’s case has drawn international attention and some outcry, with the United Nations recently joining local advocacy groups in their calls for Lee to commute her death sentence.
Their criticisms mainly center on the childhood abuse and untreated mental illness from which Pike suffered when Slemmer was killed, factors that play much larger roles in how juries make sentencing decisions now than they did at Pike’s trial. U.N. experts also said the decades Pike spent in isolation on death row, as the sole woman awaiting execution in Tennessee, should amount to unlawful torture.
Once Lee announced the clemency bid had been rejected, Pike’s attorneys issued a statement saying they were “deeply saddened and heartbroken” by the news. In it, they noted how much their client had changed while incarcerated.
“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” the statement said. “Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.”
One of her attorneys, Luke Ihnen, told CBS News that “in her classic Christa way, she has spent her last days worried more about her friends, family and legal team than herself.”
From left, a letter Christa Pike shared with her spiritual adviser, Rev. Mikey Noechel, before learning her clemency petition was denied, and handwritten lines from the poem “To ——” by Edgar Allan Poe. Rev. Mikey Noechel
In a statement included with her clemency petition, Pike said she recognized that the ramifications of her crime have been “huge, unforgettable and ruined countless lives.”
“It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected,” she said. “I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
The murder conviction
Prosecutors and jurors in Pike’s initial criminal case, as well as the judges who presided over that trial and her numerous appeals, have often described Slemmer’s murder as brutal and horrific. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told the Knoxville News-Sentinel after Pike’s conviction in 1996 that she believed Pike was “evil,” and the state “should kill her right away.”
Records from Pike’s trial show that Slemmer was repeatedly beaten and cut with both a meat cleaver and box cutter over the course of 30 minutes or an hour, in a wooded section of the University of Tennessee’s campus.
When her body was found, a piece of the skull was missing and pentagrams had been carved into her forehead and chest, details that fueled a media firestorm and coincided with the “Satanic Panic” that swept the country in the ’80s and ’90s. Fellow students said Pike later bragged about the killing, revealing to one that she had removed and kept the missing piece of Slemmer’s skull as a “souvenir.”
Pike’s boyfriend at the time of the killing, Tadaryl Shipp, and her friend, Shadolla Peterson, both helped her carry out Slemmer’s murder, according to court records. Because Shipp was 17 at the time, he wasn’t eligible for the death penalty and, instead, received a lifetime prison sentence. His parole was denied last year, but the case will be up for review again toward the end of 2031. Peterson faced probation, exclusively, in the wake of the murder after testifying against Pike at her trial.
Teen sentencing debate
Although Pike confessed to the crime, her legal team has filed numerous appeals challenging her death sentence and questioning whether she would still receive it if her case were tried today.
When Pike received her sentence at 20, in 1996, she was the youngest woman sent to death row in the United States’ modern era of capital punishment. Now, she would be the only U.S. inmate put to death since that era began who was 18, 19 or 20 when their crimes were committed, if Wednesday’s execution goes ahead. It would also mark Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since at least 1820, according to research on the death penalty in early America.
Her attorneys have said Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect, as well as psychological conditions including PTSD, bipolar disorder and congenital brain damage, were not adequately represented in her original trial. They have also highlighted that, had Pike been just months younger at the time of the murder, she would not have been eligible to face capital punishment in Tennessee.
“In sentencing Pike to death, we rule out the possibility that her crime was a product of the immature mind of youth rather than fixed depravity,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Stranch in a concurring opinion on one of Pike’s unsuccessful appeals in 2018. Despite siding with the majority’s rule against her, Stranch acknowledged the controversy around Pike’s death sentence, writing that “we presume that she is incapable of reform even though the stories of other teenage killers, many of whom have been rehabilitated behind bars, reveal other possibilities.”
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told CBS News last year that declining national support for capital punishment and the low rates of death sentences handed down to teenagers suggest Pike would have received a different sentence in contemporary times.
“Society’s view of who is truly deserving of a death sentence has changed in the years since Christa Pike was sentenced,” Maher said. “Her young age, mental illness, and the physical and mental abuse she suffered at the time of her crime would likely persuade a jury today she is not someone who should receive a death sentence.”
Incarceration in solitude
Women rarely receive death sentences in the U.S. and make up just 1% of death row inmates nationwide. Of around 2,000 people currently set to be executed around the country, just 45 are women, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which publishes data on capital punishment but doesn’t take a position on it. Seventeen of those women have been sentenced to death in California, which has a moratorium on executions and hasn’t carried one out in more than 20 years.
Throughout most of Pike’s time in prison, she wasn’t allowed to interact with other people. Among the lawsuits that her attorneys have filed, alongside their appeals, was one in which they likened her incarceration to solitary confinement because she was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row for all but three of the years she spent behind bars. Another woman, Gaile Owens, was held in the same facility as Pike for those three years before her death sentence was ultimately commuted, but the two never had contact, court filings show.
Arguing that decades of isolation violated Pike’s constitutional rights, the lawsuit ended in a settlement with the state in 2024 that granted her more opportunities to interact with other inmates.
Pike was returned to solitary confinement as her execution date approached, as Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol requires for 14 days prior to an execution, her lawyers said in their latest appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.