Tennessee is preparing to carry out the scheduled execution of Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on the state’s death row. Pike, now 50, faces lethal injection at 10 a.m. CDT on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Tennessee Supreme Court set the date last year. If the execution proceeds, she would become the first woman put to death by Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Pike was 18 in January 1995 when she and two fellow students at the Knoxville Job Corps Center took part in the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors said Pike saw Slemmer as a romantic rival for her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17. Court records show the group lured Slemmer to a secluded wooded area near the University of Tennessee agricultural campus. The attack involved prolonged beating and cutting. Pike was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy in March 1996 and sentenced to death. Shipp received a life sentence. A third participant, Shadolla Peterson, cooperated and received probation.
Pike’s attorneys have long argued that her youth, severe childhood abuse, trauma, and later mental-health diagnoses including PTSD and bipolar disorder should have weighed against a death sentence. They say the original jury did not fully hear mitigating evidence. Courts at every level have rejected those claims over nearly three decades of appeals.
On September 28, Gov. Bill Lee denied clemency.
“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,”
Lee said in a statement. Her lawyers continue seeking a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a recent letter shared by her spiritual adviser, Pike wrote:
“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace. I am not afraid to die. I’m only nervous about the process.”
The claim that Tennessee is set to execute a woman “for the first time in 200 years” is substantially accurate but conditional. Historical records show the last documented execution of a woman in Tennessee occurred around 1819–1820. If the scheduled execution proceeds, Pike would be the first woman executed by the state in more than two centuries. It would not make her the first woman ever executed in Tennessee history.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, wants to see this happen.
“She did the crime. I think she should pay for it. I would rather they would give some attention to my daughter instead of the condemned,”
She told hypefresh, expressing frustration that people paid little attention to her daughter, who was awaiting an execution. Martinez is planning to attend the execution.
Female executions remain rare in the modern U.S. death-penalty era. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 18 women have been executed nationwide since 1976, roughly 1 percent of all executions. Pike is Tennessee’s sole woman on death row.
The legal situation remains unresolved as the U.S. Supreme Court considers last-minute filings. The scheduled execution date stands.
