NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A date has been set for the state of Tennessee to execute its only female death row inmate, Christa Gail Pike, and the clock is now ticking toward September 30, 2026, with a flurry of legal challenges, a recent botched execution, and a governor who has remained silent hanging over the final countdown. Pike, now 50, has spent nearly three decades in near-total isolation for a murder she never denied committing, but her case has become a flashpoint in a broader fight over the death penalty, solitary confinement, and what happens when an 18-year-old with documented brain damage and a history of extreme abuse is sentenced to die while her co-defendant — who did the same thing the same night — still has a shot at parole
The Tennessee Supreme Court signed the execution order in September 2025, exactly one year before the scheduled date, after Pike exhausted her standard three-tier appeals process. Her request for commutation had already been denied. If the execution proceeds, she will become the first woman put to death by the state since 1819 — before the Civil War, before Tennessee had a working railroad
And she will be the only person executed in Tennessee for a crime committed at age 18 since capital punishment was reinstated in the 1970s.
But the path to that injection chamber is anything but clear. In May 2026, the state attempted to execute another death row inmate, Tony Kurthers, at the same facility where Pike is set to die. That attempt collapsed after executioners spent over an hour digging for a usable vein, puncturing the man more than a dozen times, causing audible groans of pain, and ultimately forcing Governor Bill Lee to grant a last-minute reprieve.
The physician contracted by the state to attempt a central line later admitted under oath he had not performed that procedure in over a decade.
Pike’s attorneys had already filed warnings that her own medical conditions — a documented blood clotting disorder and veins her legal team describes as unusually difficult to access — made a similar catastrophic failure foreseeable. They have since asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to appoint an independent special master to investigate whether the state’s current lethal injection protocol can be carried out on Pike without producing the same result. As of this writing, the court has not ruled.
The legal battle also centers on the method itself. Pike’s team challenges Tennessee’s current single-drug protocol using pentobarbital, arguing that her clotting disorder could cause pulmonary edema — essentially drowning in her own blood and fluid during the procedure. They further argue that the state’s mandatory 14-day isolation period before an execution, unless the condemned chooses electrocution, amounts to cruel pressure after Pike has already spent 25 years in de facto solitary confinement.
A third argument concerns her religious rights: Pike converted to Buddhism on death row, but Tennessee’s protocol bars her spiritual adviser from the execution chamber during a 12-hour blackout window — while three men executed in 2025 were granted exceptions for their own advisers. The state has offered no such accommodation for Pike.
This disparity extends far beyond the execution chamber itself. On the same night in January 1995 that Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in a wooded area near the University of Tennessee campus, two other people were present. Taterral Ship, then 17, held Slemmer down while Pike beat and carved her.
Shadola Peterson, then 18, stood watch for roughly 30 minutes. After the murder, Ship was convicted of first-degree murder but, because he was a juvenile at the time, received life with the possibility of parole. Peterson pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and was sentenced to six years of probation — she served no prison time and has lived as a private citizen ever since.
In October 2025, exactly one week after Pike’s execution date was affirmed, Ship appeared before the Tennessee Board of Parole for the first time. He expressed remorse, calling his teenage Satanism “idiotic,” but the board rejected his bid, noting the crime was one of the most horrendous they had reviewed. His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2031.
So the man who held Slemmer down will have another shot at freedom while the woman who delivered the killing blows is scheduled to die.
Colleen Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has lived with the aftermath for 31 years. She told a Knoxville TV station in 2020 that she still does not have a fragment of her daughter’s skull — a piece Pike took as a trophy and that remains in a state evidence locker. “It can’t be released while the case is still open,” Martinez said.
“And the case won’t be closed until an execution happens or doesn’t.” She said she wanted either the execution carried out or a life sentence, but most of all she just wanted the rest of her daughter back so she could finally bury her whole.
The lead-up to the execution has also been marked by a quiet but fierce campaign called Mercy for Christa, whose supporters have petitioned Governor Bill Lee directly, arguing that Pike’s jury never heard the full picture of her childhood. According to forensic evaluations submitted during her appeals, Pike was born with structural brain damage in the region tied to impulse control, suffered repeated physical and sexual abuse starting as young as two years old, and was never treated for severe borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. Her trial attorney, her later legal team contends, was unprepared to present that evidence to a jury deciding whether she lived or died.
Governor Lee has spoken publicly about his Christian faith shaping his approach to the death penalty, and he granted a reprieve to Tony Kurthers within hours of watching the botched execution attempt. But on Pike’s case, he has said nothing. His office has not responded to repeated media inquiries about whether the September 30, 2026 date still stands, whether the state has fixed the medical staffing problems that led to the Kurthers failure, or whether he intends to consider clemency.
As of now, no formal clemency petition has moved through his office, and his attorneys have noted that governors typically do not engage with such requests until an execution date is locked in.
The Tennessee Supreme Court is currently weighing Pike’s challenge to the lethal injection protocol, and a separate lawsuit by media organizations seeking greater witness access to the execution chamber was recently blocked by the same court. The public will not be allowed to see what happens in the minutes before the condemned person is strapped down.
On September 30, 2026, barring a stay, an injunction, or a governor who suddenly finds his voice, Christa Pike will be led into that small room in Nashville. She will be the first woman Tennessee has executed in 207 years. The man who helped kill Colleen Slemmer will still be in prison, his next parole hearing five years away.
And Colleen Slemmer’s mother will still be waiting to bury her daughter’s last remains.
This is not a story about wrongful conviction. There is no DNA twist, no last-minute exoneration waiting in the wings. What happened in those woods on January 12, 1995, was real and it was horrific.
The question now is whether the state has the right, the means, and the moral authority to carry out the sentence it set 30 years ago, or whether the botched execution two months ago, the structural isolation, and the chasm between what Pike’s co-defendants received and what she faces will finally force a reckoning. The clock is running. The chamber is waiting.
And in a small cell outside Nashville, Christa Pike is counting down her final days alone.
