Christa Gail Pike, the sole woman on Tennessee’s death row, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. Sentenced at age 20, she remains one of the youngest women condemned to death in the United States in the modern era.
The case stems from a January 1995 murder in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Pike then an 18-year-old Job Corps student targeted 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer alongside two accomplices. Motivated by romantic jealousy, the group lured Slemmer into a wooded area, tortured her for roughly 30 minutes, carved a pentagram into her chest, and struck her fatal blows with a piece of asphalt. Prosecutors characterized the crime as exceptionally brutal.
Following nearly three decades of legal challenges and appeals, the Tennessee Supreme Court scheduled Pike’s execution. If carried out, it will mark the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Pike’s legal team is actively pursuing a last-minute clemency petition alongside a separate religious-liberty lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol.
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