Tennessee to carry out execution of Christa Pike, first woman executed in state in more than two centuries

Tennessee will put 50-year-old Christa Pike to death by lethal injection on Wednesday, making her the first woman executed in the state in over 200 years. Pike has been on death row since her 1996 conviction for the 1995 murder of former classmate Colleen Slemmer, a crime prosecutors described as brutal and involving prolonged stabbing with a meat cleaver and box cutter.

The United Nations and local advocacy groups have urged Governor Bill Lee to commute the sentence, citing Pike’s history of childhood abuse, untreated mental illness and the decades she has spent in isolation on death row. Lee denied the clemency request on Monday.

"The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists. Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women," her attorneys said in a statement.

Pike’s legal team has argued that her childhood sexual abuse, neglect, PTSD, bipolar disorder and congenital brain damage were insufficiently considered at trial, and that a younger offender would not be eligible for capital punishment in Tennessee. A 2018 concurring opinion from U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Stranch noted the controversy surrounding the sentence, suggesting that youthful immaturity, rather than fixed depravity, may have been a factor.

If carried out, Pike would also become the only U.S. inmate executed for a crime committed while she was 18-20 years old in the modern era of capital punishment. Women comprise roughly 1% of death-row inmates nationwide, and Pike has spent most of her incarceration in solitary conditions as the sole female death-row inmate in Tennessee.