Tennessee: Christa Pike Scheduled to Be First Woman Executed by the State in Over 200 Years

Tennessee plans to execute Christa Pike on September 30, 2026, for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused on September 29, 2026, to halt it. If it goes ahead, Pike, 50, would be the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years. Gov. Bill Lee denied her request for clemency on September 28, 2026.

• Scheduled: 10 a.m. CDT, September 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville
• Clemency: denied by Gov. Bill Lee on September 28, 2026
• U.S. Supreme Court: stay request and petition denied on September 29, 2026, with no dissents noted in the order
• Victim: Colleen Slemmer, 19, killed in 1995

Clemency and a Supreme Court stay both denied

The Tennessee Department of Correction has scheduled the execution for 10 a.m. CDT at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. The Tennessee Supreme Court set the date in an order issued a year earlier, on September 30, 2025.

Lee announced on September 28, 2026, that he would not intervene. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he said that after “a thorough review of the case” he would uphold “the sentence of the State of Tennessee.”

Separately, Pike’s lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a judicial stay of execution. On September 25, 2026, they filed an application for a stay of execution, submitted to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, along with a petition asking the justices to review a September 23, 2026, decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Tennessee filed its opposition on September 28, 2026, and Pike’s lawyers replied the same day.

That request challenged how the execution would be carried out, not her conviction. Her lawyers argued that Pike, who they say has post-traumatic stress disorder linked to childhood sexual abuse, would suffer severe mental suffering under Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. They also argued that a Tennessee Supreme Court rule unlawfully limits prisoners’ ability to challenge execution methods.

On September 29, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the stay application, which Kavanaugh had referred to the full court, and declined to hear the case. The one-paragraph order gave no reasons and noted no dissents.

The killing of Colleen Slemmer

At the heart of the case is Colleen Slemmer, who was 19 when she was killed in 1995. She and Pike were classmates at Knoxville Job Corps, a federal job-training program, the Associated Press reported. Pike, who was 18, and her boyfriend at the time were convicted in her death. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996.

Slemmer’s mother wants the execution to go forward, AP reported, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

What Pike’s lawyers asked the governor for

In their clemency petition, Pike’s lawyers asked Lee to commute her death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Commutation would not have meant release. It would have kept Pike in prison for the rest of her life.

Their argument rested on her history and her age. The petition described a childhood of repeated sexual abuse and neglect that, her lawyers said, the adults and state systems around her failed to address. AP reported that Pike has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD, and that her lawyers said her untreated mental illness and background left her unable to “put the brakes on.” They also pointed out that she was 18 at the time. She was legally an adult, but her lawyers argued that her age should still weigh against a death sentence.

According to the center, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office told a court during an August 13, 2026, hearing that the state does not contest the abuse Pike suffered.

Why the execution would be historic

Pike is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which says the state last executed a woman in 1820. Historical records on early executions are incomplete, and Pike’s own court filings question one of the entries from that era, but both put the last execution of a woman in Tennessee more than 200 years ago.

Tennessee has executed men since then. What would be new is the execution of a woman. The center also says Pike would be the first person executed in Tennessee in the modern death penalty era for a crime committed at age 18, 19 or 20.

As of 5:28 p.m. CDT on September 29, 2026, the execution remained scheduled for 10 a.m. CDT on September 30, 2026. This report will be updated.