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Why Can’t Anyone Say Evil? On the Execution of Christa Pike

Why Can’t Anyone Say Evil? On the Execution of Christa Pike

Last updated on: September 29, 2026 at 12:08 pm by Jeff Hood

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Why Can’t Anyone Say Evil? On the Execution of Christa Pike 2026-09-29T12:08:45-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Colleen Slemmer Christa Pike

Colleen Slemmer / Christa Pike

Christa Pike and Colleen Slemmer

In January of 1995, Colleen Slemmer walked into the woods on the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus in Knoxville with people she thought were her friends. She was cut with a box cutter. A pentagram was carved into her chest. Her head was broken open with a piece of asphalt. Christa Pike carried a piece of her skull out of the trees and showed it off to a friend.

Evil. The word has gone quiet in the movement that opposes the death penalty. We have learned to say trauma. We have forgotten how to say what happened.

Barring intervention, the State of Tennessee will strap Pike to a gurney and kill her.

But the case for her life seemed lost before the first protest or email blast ever went out.

An Inventory of Christa Pike Is Not an Argument

Because it was built from all the usual pieces. She was abused. She was barely eighteen. She has bipolar disorder. She has PTSD. She is remorseful. She is a woman. Each of these things is true. But laid side by side, they do not add up to an argument. They add up to an inventory.

Millions of Americans live with bipolar disorder or PTSD. They drive buses. They teach school. None of them has broken a girl’s skull with a piece of asphalt and carried a shard of it home. If a diagnosis produced what happened in those woods, the country would be a field of bodies. The diagnosis did not slam the asphalt into that young woman’s head.

Abuse fares no better. Most everyone on death row was harmed as a child. If abuse caused murder, every shelter in our nation would be a mass murder scene. To offer a childhood as the reason for a killing is to tell every survivor that their wound is a loaded gun to do with what they will.

While mitigation has its place in capital sentencing, much of what passes for mitigation does not. The movement makes these arguments because it has grown willing to say anything. The brain. The trauma. The age. The gender. The GED. Whatever is in the file goes into the petition, until the last question standing is whether any of it has a chance of even being read.

There is a sentence that abolitionists love. We are all better than the worst thing we have ever done. For most people, the worst thing is a night that they cannot get back. For Christa Pike, it was breaking a piece of Slemmer’s skull loose with asphalt. It is absurd to think that we need to relativize what happened to oppose her execution.

Chivalry on a Gurney

There is also the incessant woman argument. She is the first woman Tennessee has executed in two centuries. It is a request for an exception. Men whose crimes were no worse have been strapped down without anyone counting the years since the last man was executed. To argue that a woman deserves what a man does not is to admit that someone deserves it all. Call it chivalry on a gurney.

Every one of these claims has the same bones. Each finds something in Christa Pike that might make her worth keeping alive. Each concedes that without it, her execution would make sense. A movement that argues this way does not believe its own gospel. Either murder is wrong or it is not. It is evil to kill people.

Under All the Paper: Christa Pike’s Actions and the Death Penalty are Evil

In recent days, too many abolitionists have quit stating the obvious. This is one of the most horrific crimes out there. None of us should speak from outside this. The rage is real. If anyone did what Pike did to someone you love, you would want to kill them with your own bare hands. If you cannot admit that rage, you are asking people to trust a movement that will not say what it feels.

So the argument is the one that was there the whole time, under all the paper. Christa Pike did it. It was monstrous. She should not be killed. Not because she is innocent. Not because she was abused. Not because she is a woman. Not because of anything about Christa Pike. She should not be killed because it is evil to kill people.

Evil. Say it again. The word belongs to both killings.

Catholic

Politics and Religion

About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books—including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer—Dr. Hood’s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. A frequent collaborator with men on death row, he sees theology as a shared, liberative act. Dr. Hood has served on the leadership teams of organizations like the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. His activism has earned multiple awards, including recognition from PFLAG and the Next Generation Action Network. On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood led the Dallas protest against police brutality that ended in tragedy. His actions that night saved lives, and his story is now archived in the Dallas Public Library. A father of five, husband to Emily, and friend to the incarcerated, Dr. Hood rejects institutionalism in favor of a theology rooted in people, presence, and prophetic witness. You can read more about the author here.

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