Legal clinics represent, within contemporary legal education, a privileged means of combining technical and doctrinal learning with hands-on experience of litigation and advocacy in real cases (so-called “learning by doing”). In this way, the university’s educational function is joined by a social one, orienting academic knowledge toward service to the community.

Among the most established models in this field is the Cornell International Human Rights Clinic, a legal clinic of Cornell Law School that enables students to work alongside federal public defenders on cases concerning prisoners’ rights, the death penalty, and women’s rights, before U.S. and foreign courts and international bodies.

An analysis of this educational experience – made possible for students of the University of Milan by the long-standing partnership between its Faculty of Law and Cornell Law School – is particularly useful for reflecting on the potential that comparable clinical tools may offer Italian students, especially in criminal law and in the comparative study of sanctioning systems.

To that end, we report the experience of Carolina Fontana, a fifth-year law student at the University of Milan who completed an exchange semester at Cornell Law School, taking courses in international and comparative law. Having been selected to participate in the International Human Rights Clinic, she worked alongside federal public defenders and attorneys of the Office of the Post-Conviction Defender (OPCD) on the defense of a woman sentenced to death in the United States.

The case of Christa Pike is, in this sense, an emblematic example of the issues addressed by this type of legal clinic. Sentenced to death in 1996 for an offense committed when she was barely eighteen, Pike is today the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. She suffers from psychiatric conditions – including bipolar disorder and severe post-traumatic stress disorder – that were never diagnosed or brought to the jury’s attention at trial, even though they were already documented and available at the time of the offense. Her execution, set for September 30, 2026, would make her the first woman executed in Tennessee in over two centuries, offering an occasion for broader reflection on the shortcomings of capital punishment in the United States. Even from Italy, it is possible to contribute to the international mobilization against the execution, for instance by signing the appeals and petitions promoted by the committee Mercy for Christa.

Candida Mistrorigo

1. The Cornell International Human Rights Clinic

Cornell Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic offers students the opportunity to take part in litigation and advocacy, contributing to the defense of clients of various nationalities in cases involving human rights violations.

Participation in the clinic has a theoretical component and a practical component. The former consists of acquiring knowledge of international and criminal law, with a focus on human rights, through readings, seminar discussions, and simulations. The latter involves dividing students into working groups assigned to different projects, which include litigation, investigative research, the drafting of reports on human rights violations and, at times, field research at the international level. The activities are carried out in close contact with faculty and in collaboration with international non-governmental organizations, with international bodies such as the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and with teams of lawyers operating both in the United States and in other countries.

The clinic’s work encompasses several initiatives focused on the protection of prisoners, the defense of persons sentenced to death, and the right of peoples to self-determination. In the area of capital punishment, the clinic has worked both in the defense of prisoners in Malawi and Tanzania – contributing to the release of one hundred and forty persons sentenced to death[1] – and in the defense of Mexican nationals on death row in the United States. The clinic also collaborates with the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (CCDPW) in the defense of women sentenced to death in various countries, through research aimed at documenting the impact of gender-based bias and stereotypes on their capital sentencing and conditions of confinement; it is within this context that the work on the case of Christa Gail Pike falls. Over the years, students have also documented Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara and the human rights violations committed by Israel in the Golan Heights, with particular regard to the confiscation of natural resources.

2. Capital Punishment in the United States

Pike’s case unfolds against a normative landscape marked by considerable heterogeneity among the state legal systems: capital punishment is authorized in twenty-seven states, four of which – California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Oregon – have a moratorium on executions in force.[2] Its concrete application is likewise uneven and heavily concentrated in a small number of Southern states: in 2026, twenty of the twenty-seven executions carried out to date took place in Florida and Texas,[3] while in 2025, 70% of executions were concentrated in Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas.[4]

With regard to the federal death penalty, of the sixteen sentences carried out since its reinstatement in 1988, thirteen date to the final six months of the first Trump administration.[5] The Biden administration subsequently introduced a moratorium on federal executions,[6] commuting thirty-seven of the forty death sentences then pending to life sentences. Notwithstanding a progressive decline in public support for capital punishment,[7] particularly marked among younger age groups,[8] the issue has returned to the center of the current administration’s political agenda: the administration has lifted the moratorium and declared its intention to restore and strengthen the use of the death penalty at the federal level.[9]

The application of capital punishment in the United States has long been the subject, in scholarship and in institutional debate, of numerous critiques concerning procedural safeguards, conditions of confinement, and methods of execution. From the trial stage onward, the adequacy of the legal representation afforded to indigent defendants has been called into question;[10] concerns also extend to the experience of death row itself, in particular the prolonged duration of confinement under that regime and the conditions of isolation to which some prisoners are subjected.[11] Also of note is the extensive litigation concerning methods of execution, in terms of their compatibility with the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. Although lethal injection remains the prevailing method, several states authorize alternative methods, including electrocution, nitrogen hypoxia, and the firing squad.[12]

3. The Case of Christa Pike

Born with a brain malformation caused by prenatal alcohol exposure,[13] Christa experienced, from early childhood, a history of repeated and prolonged abuse: physical, sexual, and emotional violence perpetrated by several adults, to which further sexual assaults were added during adolescence, with no record of adequate protective intervention by the adults and institutions responsible for her welfare. The repeated abuse she suffered from the earliest years of her life significantly affected her mental health: Pike attempted suicide on three occasions and developed bipolar disorder, recurrent dissociative episodes, and severe post-traumatic stress disorderconditions that were neither diagnosed nor adequately treated before the commission of the offense. Only after entering prison did Pike receive a correct diagnosis of bipolar disorder, although she had already presented, during childhood and adolescence, with symptoms such as hyper-vigilance, insomnia, impulsivity, suicidal tendencies, and an inability to self-regulate.

In an attempt to distance herself from her family environment and to pursue training as a nurse, Pike joined the Job Corps in Knoxville, where she began a romantic relationship with a peer, Tadaryl Shipp. As established during the proceedings, Shipp was known and feared for his aggressive nature and had engaged in physical violence and controlling behavior toward Pike. Pike, however, saw in the relationship a form of attention and protection she had never experienced before. According to Pike’s lawyers, it was precisely the fear of losing that bond, together with adolescent jealousy, that led the young woman to decide, together with Shipp, to take another Job Corps student, Colleen Slemmer – who was herself interested in Shipp – to a wooded area with the intent to intimidate her; the assault ended in Slemmer’s death.

Although the two co-defendants were of similar age, differing by only a few months, the sentences imposed on them at trial diverged: Pike, only recently an adult, was sentenced to death; Shipp, still a minor, could not be subjected to the same penalty and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. This disparity has taken on particular significance in light of subsequent developments in neuroscience, according to which the development of the brain regions responsible for impulse control and decision-making continues until approximately the age of twenty-five.

Pike’s defense at trial was entrusted to a court-appointed attorney who was a recent law school graduate with no experience in capital cases. The jury was informed neither of the history of abuse suffered by the defendant nor of the psychiatric conditions and brain malformation from which she suffered, even though these facts were already documented at the time of trial. According to Pike’s current legal team, moreover, the defendant’s young age, her lack of a prior criminal record, and Shipp’s role in the events were not adequately emphasized. The failure to give due weight to these factors was particularly consequential at the sentencing phase, at the conclusion of which Pike was sentenced to death and transferred to death row.

Christa Gail Pike has been on death row for thirty years, following the death sentence imposed on her when she was twenty years old. She now awaits execution, scheduled for September 30, 2026, for an offense committed in 1995, when she was eighteen.

Over these thirty years of incarceration, Pike has undergone a profound personal transformation. After years of psychotherapy and pharmacological treatment, the doctor treating her now describes Christa as a reflective, balanced, bright, and witty person, capable of processing the trauma she experienced and profoundly different from who she was at the time of the homicide, for which she expresses sincere remorse. During her incarceration, Pike has also worked inside the prison, becoming a point of reference for many of the other women incarcerated there.[14]

Christa is the only woman on death row in the State of Tennessee. For that very reason, for approximately twenty-seven years she was held in solitary confinement. During that period, she spent between twenty-two and twenty-three hours a day in a cell measuring 2.5 by 3 meters, with exits permitted only for showering and for one hour of outdoor recreation in a fenced area in the prison’s inner yard. Accordingly, in 2022, Pike’s lawyers brought an action against the Tennessee Department of Correction seeking conditions of confinement comparable to those afforded to male prisoners on death row. The latter, in addition to being held in communal cells, were able to socialize, work together, and meet with a spiritual advisor; Pike, by contrast, was denied both social interaction and participation in educational or religious programs, resulting in a state of near-total physical isolation from every other human being. In 2024, the parties reached a settlement, under which Pike now enjoys the same opportunities as male prisoners, including work within the prison and the sharing of meals with other women prisoners.[15]

As early as December 2020, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had found the existence of a serious and urgent risk of irreparable harm to Pike’s right to life and personal integrity, requesting that the United States take the measures necessary to protect her life and personal integrity, refrain from carrying out the execution, and guarantee conditions of detention consistent with international standards.[16]

On September 1, the defense submitted a clemency petition to the Governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, the only person with the authority to prevent the execution by granting clemency. Such a measure would commute the death sentence to life imprisonment without parole.[17]

The method currently prescribed under Tennessee law is lethal injection, with the condemned prisoner having the option of choosing the electric chair. According to the defense, the execution protocol was designed on the basis of the physical characteristics of male prisoners, no woman having been executed in the state since 1819.

Following the failed execution of Tony Carruthers in June 2026 – owing to the repeated inability to establish intravenous access after more than an hour of attempts – Pike’s lawyers filed a motion seeking a determination that the State of Tennessee is unable to carry out the execution in compliance with constitutional standards, with particular reference to the physical and psychological condition of their client.[18] The motion points in particular to thrombocytosis, together with the presence of particularly thin and compromised veins, which would make hemorrhagic complications highly likely during the procedure, with a consequent risk of unnecessary physical suffering. The defense has further emphasized that both the constant surveillance required in the forty-eight hours preceding the execution and the execution procedure itself are carried out by male personnel: this could force Christa to relive the trauma of the abuse she suffered, in an emotional state already severely compromised by post-traumatic stress disorder.

4. What Does It Mean to Take Part in the Defense of a Person Sentenced to Death? The Testimony of Carolina, a Student at the University of Milan

Since January, I have had the opportunity to collaborate on the defense of Christa Pike with a team of federal public defenders and attorneys from the Office of the Post-Conviction Defender (OPCD), contributing to litigation before international bodies and to the promotion of an awareness campaign through advocacy strategies.

It was an experience as demanding as it was formative, which allowed me to grasp concretely the complexity of legal defense in capital cases and to come into contact with attorneys, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and the President of the IACHR. As this was my first professional experience in the legal field, it allowed me to understand the importance of organization and clear communication in coordinating teamwork spread across multiple individuals and levels of responsibility.

The U.S. legal system differs substantially from the Italian one, particularly with regard to capital punishment; this enabled me to study procedural mechanisms and legal institutions entirely absent from the Italian legal order. Understanding so different a legal system proved, in terms of complexity, more challenging than the language barrier itself.

Participation in the clinic also allowed me to develop practical legal research and writing skills – applied to the drafting of reports and court filings – and to appreciate the importance of the narrative dimension even in a technical and objective field such as law, especially when the last remaining avenue of protection lies in a discretionary decision entrusted to a political actor. The narrative surrounding Christa’s case and public attitudes toward her are indeed decisive for the choice that Governor Bill Lee will be called upon to make regarding the granting of clemency.

The value of a legal clinic is not exhausted by the acquisition of purely technical legal skills. It allows one, particularly in the criminal field, to come into direct contact with the persons being assisted, looking beyond the mere legal classification of the offense committed and the sanction imposed. It is precisely this human contact that struck me most in this experience, having had the opportunity to meet Christa Pike in person at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

I believe the case raises a fundamental question that runs through the entire course of the proceedings and transcends the boundaries of any single legal system: what happens when the process of change that punishment is meant to foster genuinely takes place, yet the sentence nevertheless remains irreversible?

If one assumes that rehabilitation constitutes, at least in part, the raison d’être of criminal punishment, the attainment of that aim ought to bear on the assessment of whether it is appropriate to keep in force – and a fortiori to carry out – a capital sentence. The maintenance of the death penalty even in the face of a condemned person’s maturation therefore calls into question the internal coherence of the sanctioning system, highlighting how the different functions of punishment, in particular the retributive and the rehabilitative, may in extreme cases prove difficult to reconcile.

Pike’s story – marked by a childhood characterized by repeated abuse, by the inaction of the institutions responsible for protecting her, and by a long process of personal maturation – highlights the paradox of a punishment that reaches its own fulfillment precisely at the moment when its very purpose, rehabilitation, may be considered substantially achieved.

Thanks to the support she was never given while growing up, Pike appears today, as also confirmed by the professionals who have worked with her, to be an emotionally stable person capable of offering support to other women incarcerated alongside her; nevertheless, in September 2025, after three decades of imprisonment, the Tennessee Supreme Court set the date of her execution.

The clemency petition is currently under review by the Governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, who holds entirely discretionary authority: he may grant clemency or confirm the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in more than two hundred years.

Her story thus draws attention not only to the circumstances and traumas that may precede the commission of an offense, but also to the possibility of a profound transformation during incarceration. It is, ultimately, a story that interrogates the meaning of punishment and the role that the passage of time, treatment, and personal change may play in the face of the State’s response to crime.

 

[1] International Human Rights Clinic – Cornell Law School

[2] State by State Information – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[3] 2026 Executions – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[4] 2025 Executions – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[5] Federal Information – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[6] Moratorium on Federal Executions Pending Review of Policies and Procedures – justice.gov

[7] Death Penalty – gallup.com

[8] Death Penalty (younger generations) – gallup.com

[9] Memorandum Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions – justice.gov

[10] Inadequate Legal Defense – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[11] Time on Death Row – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[12] Methods of Execution – deathpenaltyinfo.org

[13] Dr. Bethany Brand, a clinical psychologist specializing in the assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders, has stated that Pike experienced “adverse events more severe than those experienced by 99% of the U.S. population,” presenting nine of the ten Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) indicators. – Dr. Brand, Forensic Psychological Evaluation

[14] Christa Pike Clemency Petition

[15] Conditions of Imprisonment – Mercy for Christa Pike

[16] Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Resolution 95/2020

[17] Christa Pike Clemency Petition

[18] Motion Challenging Constitutionality of Lethal Injection Protocol