Christa Pike, a death row prisoner, is set to be executed on Wednesday, September 30, after she lost her final right to appeal before the Supreme Court.
Pike, who was given a death sentence in the 1995 brutal murder, is set to become the first Tennessee woman in two centuries to be executed.
The Supreme Court denied Pike’s request for a stay of execution on September 29, and she is now set to be executed by lethal injection on September 30.
The court joins Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and lower courts in rejecting arguments from Pike’s attorneys that she ought to be spared given her profoundly traumatic childhood.
GOV. Lee announced on September 28 that he upheld Christa Pike’s death sentence.
If Pike’s execution proceeds as planned, it would mark the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years and only the 19th in the U.S. in the last five decades.
Pike, who is 50 now, was 18 when she killed their classmate, Collen Slemmer, 19, then, at Kroxville Job Corps in 1995.
When she was sentenced to death in March 1996, Pike was the youngest woman ever to be awarded a death sentence.
2026-09-30 13:03:00
