Only one of the 42 people on Tennessee’s death row is a woman, who is imprisoned for allegedly torturing and killing her fellow classmate in 1995.
Christa Pike is scheduled to be the first female inmate executed in the state in more than two centuries, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Her execution date is planned for September 30, 2026.
Pike, now 50, is also slated to be the only person to undergo the death penalty in Tennessee “for a crime committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era,” the center reports.
In 1995, Pike was 18 years old when she was accused of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her fellow student at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville, according to court filings.
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Before the killing, Pike allegedly revealed the plan to a friend, then later showed that same friend a piece of Slemmer’s skull, court records say.
At the time, Pike had been dating a 17-year-old in the Job Corps and viewed Slemmer as a “romantic rival,” according to prosecutors, USA Today reported.
On January 12, 1995, Pike, her boyfriend and a friend led Slemmer into the woods, where Pike allegedly attacked her, according to the outlet.
Court records state that Pike had slashed Slemmer’s throat, beat her and threw pieces of asphalt at her. Pike also allegedly told her friend that she used a meat cleaver to slash Slemmer’s back and cut a pentagram into her forehead and chest.
Pike and her then boyfriend ultimately admitted to the murder, according to a report published by the University of Tennessee Libraries. She was found guilty in Slemmer’s killing in March 1996 and sentenced that same month to death.
Her boyfriend was sentenced to life in prison for his alleged role in the murder, while Pike’s friend received a sentence of probation in exchange for testimony against Pike and the boyfriend, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike’s attorneys have argued against the death sentence in recent years.
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In a June 2021 motion cited by the Death Penalty Information Center, her attorneys wrote that “Life imprisonment is a proper punishment for Christa, just as it is for the nearly 200 women convicted of first degree murder who did not receive death in Tennessee since 1978” and argued against execution.
In 2023, Pike wrote in a letter to The Tennessean that she has “changed drastically” since the killing.
“Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable and ruined countless lives,” Pike wrote to the newspaper. “I was a mentally ill 18 yr. old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I [affected]. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime.”
In January, Pike filed a lawsuit in which she argued that Tennessee’s execution method — lethal injection — violates her religious rights, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In a Thursday, March 19, response viewed by USA Today, the state said that Pike has not sufficiently argued that her execution would be unconstitutional.
Out of all the individuals on death row in the U.S., about 2% of the inmates are women, the Death Penalty Information Center reported in February.
Only 18 women have been put to death since 1976, according to the center.
The state with the highest number of executions involving women is Texas, where 6 women have been executed since 1976, according to data published by the center.
