With only days remaining before Christa Pike’s scheduled execution, her case has entered its final and most consequential phase as attorneys, trauma experts and advocacy groups continue pressing Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee for clemency.

Pike, 50, is currently scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10:00 a.m. CDT on September 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Tennessee correction officials are already carrying out final execution preparations, including media access and witness arrangements. As of the latest available update, her death warrant remains active. Death Penalty Information Center

Her legal team has filed a 226-page clemency petition asking the governor to commute her sentence to life without parole. The petition argues that Pike’s age at the time of the crime — 18 — should be considered alongside a childhood marked by repeated sexual abuse, neglect, later diagnoses of PTSD and bipolar disorder, and decades spent under highly restrictive prison conditions. Death Penalty Information Center

Another unusual dispute now centers on the execution procedure itself. Pike has reportedly asked for an all-female execution team, arguing that physical restraint and invasive procedures carried out by men could trigger severe trauma responses connected to her history of sexual abuse. Reports also say her lawyers have raised hanging as an alternative if the state will not accommodate that request. New York Post

Trauma specialists supporting her challenge have warned that restraint, loss of bodily control and invasive medical procedures could trigger intense flashbacks. More than 100 organizations and experts focused on violence against women have also urged Gov. Lee to commute the sentence. Those arguments are part of the clemency effort and do not alter Pike’s conviction. Death Penalty Information Center

Pike was convicted in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. If the execution proceeds, Pike would become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years and the only person in the state’s modern death-penalty era executed for a crime committed at age 18, 19 or 20. Death Penalty Information Center

The central question is now extremely narrow: will the governor or a court intervene before September 30? No stay or commutation has been publicly announced in the latest available records, meaning the execution remains scheduled while the final legal and clemency efforts continue.