Christa Pike is scheduled for execution this Wednesday, September 30, as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, and advocates are pressing Governor Bill Lee to stop it.
Local 3 News reported the date in an update that also described the planned execution as arriving in just three days and as the first time Tennessee would execute a woman in 200 years.
Pike was convicted of torturing and murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995 and sentenced to death at age 18. The case now sits at the center of a late push for clemency, a prior method-of-execution lawsuit, and a public fight over whether a decades-old capital judgment will be carried out.
In January 1995, Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, attacked Slemmer on a rainy night on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus. Slemmer was a fellow Knoxville Job Corps student and was described as Pike’s friend.
Pike was convicted that year of torturing and murdering Slemmer. A Tennessee jury and court imposed a death sentence when Pike was 18. She has remained the only woman on the state’s death row.
Those core facts define the legal posture. Tennessee obtained a capital conviction for a torture murder. The sentence has stood long enough for Pike to become the sole woman facing execution in the state system.
The update places the execution on this Wednesday, September 30. A previous story in the same package stated Pike was set to be executed in September 2026. The materials do not reconcile those two timings.
Advocates are calling on Governor Bill Lee to halt the execution. They say Pike suffered extensive abuse as a child. Lee has previously said the execution will continue as planned. No verbatim Lee statement appears in the available material.
That leaves a clear institutional line. The scheduled date is public. The governor’s prior position is that the sentence proceeds. Clemency pressure is directed at the one office that can stop it.
Chattanooga author, counselor, and advocate Sarah Bailey cast the case as a double failure of protection.
"The girl who was murdered deserved protection. The girl who grew up surrounded by violence deserved protection before she became capable of violence herself. We failed them both in different ways,"
Bailey’s statement does not dispute the conviction. It asks the governor to weigh childhood abuse claims against the finality of a death warrant. An unnamed group of advocates is making the same ask: stop the execution.
Investigators and courts already determined guilt and sentence in 1995. What remains is executive clemency review and the state’s chosen method of carrying out a lawful judgment.
Pike sued the state and several others over the lethal injection method. WBIR, the NBC affiliate in Knoxville, learned of the lawsuit first.
The suit claims the method used for lethal injection can cause flash pulmonary edema, described as a sudden frothy fluid in the lungs. Pike says she has a medical condition that causes extra clotting and claims that condition would cause her lungs to fill with that fluid.
Her legal team says a new protocol that relies on pentobarbital to cause respiratory and cardiac arrest, instead of the three-drug cocktail used in previous cases, violates the national and state constitutions in part due to her "unique medical conditions."
Pike also identifies as a practicing Buddhist. The package includes her claim that "the requirement and the requirement that she plead an alternative method violates her sincerely held religious beliefs against participating in any process leading to her own death."
Death row offenders who committed their crimes before January 1, 1999, still have the opportunity to request electrocution instead of lethal injection. The materials do not state whether Pike requested or waived that option.
Publicly confirmed elements include the 1995 conviction for torturing and murdering Slemmer, the death sentence imposed when Pike was 18, her status as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, the scheduled Wednesday, September 30 date in the update, the advocacy campaign aimed at Lee, and the existence of a method-of-execution suit raising clotting, pulmonary edema, pentobarbital, constitutional, and religious claims.
Authorities have not publicly clarified in this material how the September 30 date relates to the earlier September 2026 reference. No public results are included here on the lawsuit’s final court status, docket number, full defendant list, or filing date. Investigators and courts have not, in this package, detailed the full torture method beyond the conviction itself.
No public release in the package names the members of the advocate group or supplies primary evidence exhibits for the childhood abuse claims. Governor Lee’s exact words and the date of his prior statement are not quoted.
Capital cases test whether a state can finish what a jury and judge lawfully started. Pike’s sentence rests on a torture-murder conviction. Slemmer was 19. The attack happened on a university campus after both young women had been Job Corps students in Knoxville.
Method challenges are common in modern death penalty litigation. Here the claims turn on alleged medical risk under a pentobarbital protocol, a clotting condition, and a religious objection to pleading an alternative method. Tennessee law still offers an electrocution option for crimes committed before January 1, 1999, which covers the 1995 murder.
Clemency sits outside the courtroom. Advocates want Lee to treat childhood abuse as reason to spare Pike. The governor’s prior public stance is that the execution continues as planned. That is the collision point: a final sentence, a scheduled date, and an executive decision.
Conservative readers watching institutional competence will note the basics. A jury convicted. A court sentenced. The state set a date. Litigation attacked the chemicals and the process. Activists now seek a political off-ramp. Each step is a test of whether lawful judgments mean what they say.
Officials will need to determine the operative execution date with final clarity given the internal timing conflict in the coverage. Courts will need to resolve, if they have not already, the lethal injection claims tied to pulmonary edema risk and the pentobarbital protocol.
The state will need to determine whether any electrocution election is active for a pre-1999 crime. The governor’s office will need to determine whether clemency is granted or denied before the warrant is carried out.
None of those steps rewrites the 1995 verdict. They decide how, when, and whether a standing death sentence is enforced.
When a state keeps a murder conviction on the books for decades, the public is entitled to a clear finish: equal enforcement of capital judgments, transparent method rules, and a clemency process that does not erase the victim under the banner of the offender’s biography.
