Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30, 2026. This marks the first time the State of Tennessee will put a woman to death in more than 200 years. Pike, now 50 years old, was convicted for the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp for troubled teens in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The execution date was set following the denial of a clemency request by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. After evaluating the petition submitted by Pike’s legal team, Governor Lee stated that he would uphold the sentence imposed by the state.
“After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” Governor Lee said in a public statement.
Details of the 1995 Case
In 1995, Pike was an 18-year-old student at the Knoxville Job Corps. Alongside her then-boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, and a third teenager, Pike tortured and killed fellow student Colleen Slemmer on the University of Tennessee Agriculture campus. The case gained national notoriety due to the severe brutality of the offense and the young ages of the perpetrators.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death, making her the youngest woman on death row in modern United States history. Her co-defendant, Shipp, received a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole because of his status as a minor at the time of the crime. The third teenager admitted to being an accessory and received probation.
Legal Arguments and Clemency Petition
Pike’s defense team and civil rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), mounted extensive efforts to halt the execution. Attorneys argued that Pike suffered from severe childhood trauma, including repeated physical and sexual abuse starting from a very young age. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
With this decision, the State of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: an 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and 18 is too young to face execution.
Defense lawyers also contended that contemporary scientific research regarding adolescent brain development supports sparing individuals who committed offenses while under the age of 21. , they pointed out that Pike had transformed during her decades in prison, receiving treatment for her mental health conditions and mentoring other incarcerated women.
Historical Context of Executions in Tennessee
The last recorded execution of a woman in Tennessee occurred in 1820, when a woman named Martin Eve was hanged after being charged as an accessory to murder, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. Pike’s impending execution places Tennessee in a unique category within the modern U.S. death penalty era, as she is the first female inmate to face capital punishment in the state in over two centuries.
Nationwide, executions of women remain statistically rare. Since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976, only 18 women have been executed, accounting for roughly 1% of all total executions carried out across the country.
