Christa Pike Faces Execution in Tennessee After Clemency and Final Appeal Are Denied

More than three decades after 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was murdered in Knoxville, Tennessee, Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed today.

Pike, now 50, is the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row. She is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. CDT on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Tennessee Department of Correction records confirm the scheduled execution date and time.

If carried out, Pike’s execution would be the first execution of a woman by Tennessee in more than 200 years. She would also become the first person executed by the state in the modern era for a crime committed at age 18.

The final legal efforts to stop the execution have now been rejected.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee denied Pike’s clemency request on September 28, declining to commute her sentence to life imprisonment without parole. On September 29, the U.S. Supreme Court denied her application for a stay and her petition for review.

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