A Tennessee woman who has spent three decades on death row is making an unusual series of requests as her execution approaches, including asking for an all-female execution team and saying she would prefer hanging over lethal injection.
Fox News host Harris Faulkner raised the requests during an “Outnumbered” discussion about Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. The panel quickly moved beyond the legal questions surrounding Pike’s requests and into a broader debate about punishment, victims, clemency and whether the death penalty delivers justice.
Faulkner said Pike’s attorneys argue that having men involved in carrying out the execution could retraumatize her because of abuse she reportedly suffered as a child. They also contend that complications during a lethal injection could cause additional trauma and potentially raise Eighth Amendment concerns.
Pike has also said she would prefer to be hanged in front of witnesses, including members of Slemmer’s family.
A Brutal Case From 1995
Faulkner reminded viewers that Pike has been on death row for about 30 years after she and her then-boyfriend were convicted in connection with Slemmer’s killing when they were teenagers.
According to the Fox News segment, Pike lured Slemmer into a wooded area, where she was beaten and mutilated before she died. Faulkner said Pike also kept part of the victim’s remains as a souvenir, a detail that underscored why prosecutors and Slemmer’s family have described the crime in such severe terms.
The panel also played archival material discussing the injuries inflicted on Slemmer and Pike’s own statements about what happened.
Those details make the current legal debate unusually difficult to separate from the emotional weight of the underlying crime. Whatever argument is made about execution procedures, the panel repeatedly returned to the fact that Slemmer’s family has spent decades living with the consequences of the murder.
Clemency Push Draws Strong Reaction
Faulkner said several advocacy groups are urging Tennessee’s governor to grant Pike clemency, pointing to the abuse she experienced during childhood.
Slemmer’s mother, however, has taken a very different position. Faulkner said she plans to travel from Florida to Nashville and quoted her frustration that public attention often shifts toward the person convicted rather than the victim.
“It’s never about the victims,” Slemmer’s mother said, according to the segment. “It’s like Colleen was never there.”
Co-host Marcus Lemonis strongly agreed with that concern and said Slemmer’s name should remain central to the discussion.
“Colleen Slemmer, that’s the name that matters,” Lemonis said, arguing that focusing too heavily on Pike risks giving the killer greater public importance than the person who died.
That tension is one of the most striking parts of cases like this. Appeals and execution challenges naturally place the condemned prisoner at the center of legal coverage, while surviving relatives can feel that the person who was killed slowly disappears from the public story.
Panel Splits Over The Death Penalty
Kennedy, host of the “Kennedy Saves the World” podcast, said she was not defending Pike and did not support clemency, but she also made clear that she opposes capital punishment.
She argued that Pike should instead spend the rest of her life in prison.
“I still don’t believe the state should be putting people to death,” Kennedy said, adding that opposition to clemency and opposition to the death penalty can exist at the same time.
Kennedy also criticized what she described as a culture that sometimes turns killers into celebrities through documentaries, television projects and other media attention.
Fox News contributor Rebeccah Heinrichs took the opposite position on capital punishment. She said she was thinking primarily about Slemmer and her family, arguing that supporters of the death penalty see it as a form of justice not only for victims’ relatives but also for society.
Heinrichs also said supporters view capital punishment as a deterrent and as a way for society to draw a firm line around especially serious crimes.
In her view, the case had already been delayed for decades, and Pike’s latest legal efforts amounted to another attempt to prevent the sentence from being carried out.
Lara Trump Calls Requests “Outrageous”
Lara Trump, host of “My View with Lara Trump,” delivered one of the strongest reactions during the discussion.
She pointed to the weapons used in Slemmer’s murder and rejected the idea that Pike should receive sympathy because of psychological trauma.
“I think this whole thing is totally outrageous,” Trump said.
She also criticized the amount of time that has passed since the murder and conviction, noting that Pike was convicted and sentenced decades ago.
Trump further raised the financial cost of incarceration, saying taxpayers had spent roughly $48,000 per year to keep Pike imprisoned, though Lemonis later pushed back on framing life-and-death questions primarily around money.
Trump said she supports the death penalty in cases such as this one and argued that Pike should not receive the accommodations she is seeking.
Her comments reflected one side of the discussion clearly: that the length of the appeals process itself can become frustrating for people who believe the original sentence should eventually be carried out.
Justice Or Closure?
Lemonis returned to the philosophical question at the center of the panel’s disagreement.
He said he is not in favor of the death penalty and questioned whether execution actually provides justice, suggesting that spending the remainder of one’s life in prison could itself be a severe form of punishment.
Lemonis said he did not want the discussion reduced to the cost of imprisonment and wondered whether allowing a prisoner to die might actually end the punishment rather than deepen it.
Heinrichs responded that considerable weight should be given to the wishes of victims’ relatives, particularly when they describe an execution as part of their sense of justice and closure.
For her, Slemmer’s mother had been deprived of the life her daughter might otherwise have lived, and that loss deserved to remain central.
Faulkner then raised another issue: how much suffering families endure every time a death penalty case returns to court or public debate.
She noted that carrying out a sentence can, for some families, also “close the conversation.”
Unusual Requests Add Another Layer
The requests themselves are unusual enough to draw attention even before the broader death penalty debate begins.
An all-female execution team is being sought because Pike’s lawyers say her history of abuse by men could make an all-male team psychologically harmful, while the request for hanging represents a dramatic departure from the lethal-injection method discussed by the panel.
Yet the discussion on “Outnumbered” showed that the execution method was only one piece of a much larger argument.
Kennedy and Lemonis questioned whether the state should execute people at all, while Heinrichs and Trump focused heavily on punishment, deterrence, the jury’s verdict and the suffering of Slemmer’s family.
Faulkner kept returning the discussion to what repeated legal challenges mean for relatives who have already spent decades revisiting the crime.
That may be the most revealing part of the debate. Pike’s final requests are unusual, but the deeper disagreement is familiar: whether justice is best served by carrying out a death sentence or by leaving a convicted murderer in prison for life, and how much weight should be given to the surviving family as that decision reaches its final stages.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
