Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, is scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026. If the sentence is carried out, she will be the first woman put to death in the state in more than two centuries and the 19th woman executed in the United States since capital punishment resumed in 1976.

Pike was 18 when she and two other teenagers killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer on January 12, 1995. All three were students at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17. They lured Slemmer into woods on the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus, where she was beaten, stabbed and cut over a prolonged attack. A pentagram was carved into her chest. Pike later showed classmates a piece of Slemmer’s skull she had kept.

Pike was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to death at age 20, making her one of the youngest women condemned in the modern era. Shipp received a life sentence and later became eligible for parole. Shadolla Peterson testified for the state and avoided prison. In 2004 Pike received an additional 25 years for attempting to strangle a fellow inmate.

Because the murder occurred before 1999, Tennessee law gives Pike a choice between lethal injection with pentobarbital and electrocution. The image circulating with recent coverage shows both her mugshots and courtroom photographs and the state’s electric chair. The Department of Correction has indicated lethal injection is the planned method unless she elects otherwise.

Her lawyers have spent years arguing that the sentence should not stand. They cite severe childhood physical and sexual abuse, undiagnosed bipolar disorder and PTSD at the time of the crime, and nearly three decades of highly isolated confinement as Tennessee’s only condemned woman. In early September they filed a 226-page clemency petition asking Governor Bill Lee to commute the sentence to life without parole. United Nations human-rights experts separately urged federal and state officials to halt the execution, calling her prolonged isolation and the planned transfer to a men’s prison before the execution a risk of severe retraumatization.

A special master appointed by the Tennessee Supreme Court held a three-day hearing in August on claims that Pike’s blood-clotting disorder and PTSD would make lethal injection unconstitutionally painful. He found that her team had not met the legal burden and declined to block the date. Related filings remain active. Lee has the sole power to grant clemency.

Pike, now 50, has said she is not asking to leave prison. She has asked to live out her life inside state facilities and to be useful to others. The governor has not publicly announced a decision. Unless a court or the governor intervenes, the execution is set for Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on September 30.

Sources
Wikipedia: Christa Pike; Associated Press; The Tennessean; Death Penalty Information Center; OHCHR / UN Special Procedures; WBIR; Nashville Banner; CBS News; USA Today.