On 30 September, the state of Tennessee plans to put Christa Pike to death. She would be the third person brought to the death chamber in the Volunteer state this year, one of which was stopped after it was botched.

She would join 17 others who have been put to death there since 1960. None of them were women.

In fact in all of US history, only 578 women have been executed, a little more than 3% of our country’s total. The last one was Amber McLaughlin, killed in Missouri in 2024.

So, on the face of it, the fate that awaits Pike is unusual. But on second glance, it displays many of the hallmarks of America’s broken death penalty system.

Like many who end up on death row, Pike had an unspeakably difficult childhood. She was raped and abused and, when not being subject to such horrors, was abandoned and neglected by her parents.

So it was not surprising when Pike turned to violence, and with two others committed a murder when she was still a teenager. As the psychologist and trauma expert Bethany Brand explains: “At 18 years old, her immature, traumatized brain made her exceptionally vulnerable to impulses and extremely poor decisions … Unmedicated and untreated, she was not able to put the ‘brakes on’ her bipolar- and trauma-triggered emotions.”

When it came to her trial, Pike’s lawyer failed to present mitigating evidence that was readily available to him and to........

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