| When Christa Gail Pike was twenty years old, she | | | | trophy and showed it off around her school. That |
| was convicted and sentenced to death for a crime | | | | was the level of depravity and indifference to human |
| she committed when she was eighteen. That is | | | | life that she exibited. |
| Christa Pike's story. It sounds horrible, doesn't it? A | | | | When she was convicted and sentenced to death, |
| girl so young, her life already over - as, even if she | | | | many were outraged and heartbroken. Was it |
| was not put to death, she would surely live out the | | | | because of her gender? If a boy had done such a |
| rest of her life behind bars - at such a young, tender | | | | similarly heinous thing, wouldn't the public be glad to |
| age. | | | | know that he was safely locked away? It seems |
| However, there is more to Christa Pike's story than | | | | society has a soft spot for women. |
| meets the eye. | | | | But, in this case, that soft spot was misplaced. Far |
| First of all, the crime she committed was incredibly | | | | from being rehabilitated by prison, Pike attempted to |
| heinous, and for the pettiest of reasons. She was | | | | murder a fellow prisoner by strangulation only five |
| convinced that the victim, Colleen Slemmer, was | | | | years after her incarceration. |
| trying to steal her boyfriend. But rather than make | | | | Why is it so unthinkable to society that we should |
| snide comments about her behind her back as most | | | | punish a woman's bad acts as severely as a man's? If |
| girls her age would do in that situation, Pike tortured | | | | you do the crime, you should do the time. Your |
| and killed her. She kept a piece of her skull as a | | | | gender shouldn't matter. |