Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee has yet to act on a clemency petition that has gathered more than 2,500 signatures, and the state’s highest court has not ruled on a motion to investigate the lethal injection protocol after a botched execution in May. The clock is ticking toward September 30, 2026, when Christa Gail Pike is scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Pike was 18 years old on January 12, 1995, when she lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to an abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee campus, believing Slemmer was pursuing her boyfriend.
According to court records and Pike’s own 46-page confession, she and her then-boyfriend Tateral Ship, then 17, and another accomplice, Shadala Peterson, then 18, subjected Slemmer to a prolonged assault. Pike struck Slemmer with a piece of asphalt, crushing her skull, and then removed a fragment of the skull as a trophy. Slemmer’s body was found the next morning by groundskeepers.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by electrocution on March 30, 1996. At 20 years old, she became the youngest woman on death row in the United States in the modern era. Ship, because he was 17 at the time, was ineligible for the death penalty and received life with parole eligibility.
Peterson pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and received probation. She has been free for three decades.
Now, at 50 years old, Pike faces execution by lethal injection under a new single-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 protocol using pentobarbital.
Her legal team has filed a lawsuit challenging the protocol, arguing that Pike suffers from thrombocytopenia, a blood clotting disorder that would cause her to drown in her own blood during the procedure. They also cite her small veins, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder as factors that make a botched execution more likely, especially after the state’s failed attempt to execute Tony Kurthers on May 21, 2026. That execution was aborted after executioners punctured Kurthers more than a dozen times over 90 minutes, prompting Governor Lee to issue a reprieve.
Pike’s attorneys have asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to appoint a special master to investigate the protocol’s reliability. The court has not yet ruled. Meanwhile, an international petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights argues that executing Pike would violate her fundamental rights, and a public advocacy campaign, Mercy for Christa, continues to seek clemency.
Pike has converted to Buddhism during her decades on death row. Her spiritual adviser is barred from the execution chamber under current protocol, and she faces a 12-hour blackout period before execution with no contact with that adviser. Three men executed in Tennessee in 2025 were granted exceptions to that blackout period, but Pike has not received the same accommodation.
In a documentary filmed for Wet TV, Pike said, “I know I don’t deserve to be out walking around with everybody else in normal society. I did something horrible that is unacceptable, and I realized that.”
The case has reignited debate about the age of criminal responsibility.
Pike was nine months older than Ship, who was spared the death penalty solely because he was 17. A Sixth Circuit judge wrote in a dissenting opinion that society’s evolving standards likely do not permit the execution of individuals who were under 21 at the time of their offense. That argument has not prevailed in court, but it continues to shape the legal fight.
The Tennessee Supreme Court must notify Pike of the execution method by August 28, 2026. If the execution proceeds, she will become the 19th woman executed in the United States since 1976, and the first in Tennessee since 1819. The state has carried out multiple executions in the last two years, but no woman has faced that fate within its borders for more than 200 years.
Pike’s accomplices have long since moved on. Ship’s first parole hearing was denied in October 2025, and he will not be reconsidered until 2030. Peterson walked free decades ago.
Only Pike remains on death row, with a date that grows closer every day.
As the legal battles continue, the question persists: Should a crime committed at 18, with a brain still developing, carry a sentence of death? That question now hangs over a case that has already consumed three decades, a victim’s family still grieving, and a woman who has spent nearly her entire adult life on a cell block built to end her life.
The final chapter of Christa Pike’s story is not yet written. But the date is set, and the state of Tennessee is ready to move forward. Whether Governor Lee or the courts will intervene remains the only unknown.
