Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on Sept. 30 and has asked that an all-female team carry out the procedure if the sentence proceeds.

Pike was convicted in the 1995 killing of fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. If the execution goes forward, she would be the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819. Governor Bill Lee could still grant clemency before 10 a.m. local time that day. Her lawyers have filed a lengthy clemency petition and are seeking a last-minute reprieve.

Under the state’s updated protocol, the execution would use a single-drug dose of pentobarbital. Pike’s attorneys say she is terrified of a painful death by lethal injection. They argue she has post-traumatic stress disorder tied to abuse she suffered as a child and that an all-male execution team would heighten her trauma. They also say a rare blood disorder could make finding a vein more difficult and increase the risk of a prolonged procedure.

Pike previously asked a court to allow hanging instead of lethal injection. Her lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, argued that lethal injection administered by men would raise the risk of an Eighth Amendment violation. The state’s legal team has said she has not presented scientific evidence sufficient to block the execution.

Pike’s goal is to have the death sentence replaced with life in prison without parole. In comments featured in a documentary about her case, she said she barely sleeps, has “horrible nightmares,” and that her “nerves are shredded” after living with a set execution date for a year.

Court records describe the 1995 crime as a planned attack in which Pike and others lured Slemmer away from the Job Corps center. Pike later told a friend she had killed Slemmer and showed her a piece of the victim’s skull. Pike was 18 at the time. Her co-defendant and then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 and was not eligible for the death penalty under Tennessee law.

Her clemency petition cites childhood abuse, a bipolar diagnosis, decades in solitary confinement, and later research on brain development and trauma. If the schedule does not change, Pike would be awakened early on Sept. 30, allowed a last meal, and given final visits before the scheduled execution.

Source: New York Post reporting, Sept. 22, 2026.