The Murder of Colleen Slemmer part 2
The Murder of Colleen Slemmer part 2
After the trial
Following the guilty verdict, Pike launched, cancelled, and then again launched an appeal of her conviction in the Tennessee courts. In June 2001, then in June 2002, Pike asked the courts to drop her appeal, seeking execution via electrocution. Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz granted the request and an execution date of August 19, 2002, was set.
Pike soon changed her mind again and on July 8, 2002, defense lawyers filed a motion to allow the appeal process to begin anew. The motion was denied. On August 2, 2002, a state appeals court ruled the proceedings would be continued and the execution was not carried out.
In December 2008, Pike's latest request for a new trial was turned down and she was returned to death row. With this denial Pike's allowed appeals under the rules and procedures of the State of Tennessee's criminal justice system were exhausted.
On August 24, 2001, Pike (with alleged assistance from inmate Natasha Cornett - an article about whom will follow this one) attacked and attempted to strangle fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoe string, nearly choking her to death.
Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder for this assault on August 12, 2004. Although the Tennessee Department of Corrections believes that Cornett was an accomplice to this crime, there was insufficient evidence to charge her with helping Pike attack Jones.
In March 2012, it was revealed that Pike made escape plans involving a corrections officer named Justin Heflin and a New Jersey man named Donald Kohut. It has never been determined how it began. Kohut, a personal trainer in his early thirties, started writing letters and corresponding with Pike around the beginning of 2011.
By July of that year, Kohut, of Flemington, New Jersey, was making the 900 mile drive to Nashville, Tennessee once or twice a month to visit Pike in person on visiting days. Eventually Kohut concocted an escape plan and enlisted corrections officer Justin Heflin, who agreed to participate in return for bribes.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections has not provided details about the plan; the unsealed indictment laid out a scenario where a prison key would be traced and then a duplicate created. The attempted prison break was thwarted by the Tennessee Department of Corrections, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and the New Jersey State Police. The plan was not very far along when it was uncovered.
In March 2012, Kohut was arrested and charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit escape, Heflin was arrested and charged with bribery, official misconduct and conspiracy to commit escape, and Pike was not charged as it was unclear to investigators if she was actually a participant in the conspiracy or was merely aware of it.
On May 31, 2012, Kohut was sentenced to seven years in prison. Heflin, who cooperated with authorities after his arrest, served no prison time but was terminated from his job with the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
In May 2014 Pike's lawyers entered an appeal in the federal court system. Her lawyers sought a commutation of the sentence from death to prison on the following grounds: ineffective assistance of counsel; Pike suffered from mental illness; and capital punishment as administered in Tennessee is unconstitutional. In a 61-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Harry S. Mattice Jr. issued on March 11, 2016, all grounds were rejected and the requested commutation was denied.
On August 22, 2019, having heard the same appeal by Pike's lawyers on October 1, 2018, the three judge United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit panel unanimously upheld the lower court ruling and denied relief.
On August 27, 2020, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery's office requested the Tennessee Supreme Court to set an execution date for Pike. On June 7, 2021, Pike's attorneys filed a motion to oppose the execution date and request a Certificate of Commutation. If Pike is executed, she would be the first woman executed by Tennessee in roughly 200 years.
Slemmer's mother May Martinez told WBIR that she still hasn't gotten that piece back and won't receive it until Pike, now 45, is put to death. "Honestly, my heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it," Martinez told the station. "I want this to happen before I die. Otherwise, nobody will see justice."
Pike's attorneys argued that their client suffers from severe mental illness and endured abuse, neglect and was raped twice as a child.
"Before her arrest at age eighteen, Pike had a horrific childhood," they wrote in the filing. "Before she was even born, she suffered brain damage. Then, from the time she was a small child,11, she endured abuse, neglect, multiple violent rapes, and suffered from severe mental illness.
Meanwhile, Martinez told WBIR that both Pike and Shipp have been giving interviews about her daughter's murder while behind bars. "They both get fame from it. And I just want Christa down so I can end it," she said.
