Death-Sentenced Prisoner Christa Pike Files Religious Challenge to Tennessee’s Execution Protocol

Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, has filed a law­suit in the Davidson County Chancery Court chal­leng­ing the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, assert­ing it vio­lates her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and con­flicts with her reli­gious beliefs. The state’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col relies sole­ly on pen­to­bar­bi­tal to induce res­pi­ra­to­ry and car­diac arrest, rather than the for­mer three-drug cocktail. 

Ms. Pike argues that Tennessee’s lim­i­ta­tion on cler­gy, which excludes her Buddhist spir­i­tu­al advi­sor, restricts her ​“sin­cere­ly held reli­gious belief of Buddhism,” vio­lates her First Amendment rights, and ​“bur­dens” her right to free exer­cise of reli­gion. The new pro­to­col also lim­its com­mu­ni­ca­tion with her spir­i­tu­al advi­sor and oth­ers dur­ing the final 12 hours before her exe­cu­tion, some­thing her attor­neys argue is also uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Oscar Smith, Byron Black, and Harold Nichols, all exe­cut­ed in 2025, were exempt­ed from this 12-hour ​“black­out” rule and had con­tact with their spir­i­tu­al advi­sors. Challenging the state’s death penal­ty pro­to­col requires Ms. Pike to pro­vide a plau­si­ble alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion, which she argues would vio­late her reli­gious beliefs by requir­ing her to ​“participate[e] in any process lead­ing to her own death.” Her coun­sel argues that the state’s require­ment infringes on Ms. Pike’s reli­gious beliefs, and ​“does not fur­ther a com­pelling government interest.”

Ms. Pike is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 30, 2026, and would be the first woman exe­cut­ed in Tennessee in more than 200 years and the only per­son exe­cut­ed in the state for a crime com­mit­ted at age 18, 19, or 20 in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. In 1995, at 18 years old, Ms. Pike and two oth­er teens mur­dered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom they knew from the Knoxville Job Corps. Ms. Pike was the only indi­vid­ual to be cap­i­tal­ly charged. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 years old, received a life sen­tence, and is now eli­gi­ble for parole, while Shadolla Peterson, who was 18, tes­ti­fied against Ms. Pike and Mr. Shipp and received probation.

Tennessee’s pen­to­bar­bi­tal pro­to­col, which went into effect in December 2024, was devel­oped as the result of a mul­ti-year lethal injec­tion pro­to­col review prompt­ed by an order from Governor Bill Lee in 2022 fol­low­ing ​“an over­sight in preparation[s] for lethal injec­tion.” Ms. Pike’s law­suit alleges that the state’s new pen­to­bar­bi­tal pro­to­col ​“is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched exe­cu­tions for decades: secre­cy, inten­tion­al omis­sion, inat­ten­tion to detail, and untrained and unli­censed prison per­son­nel attempt­ing to fill a med­ical role.” The law­suit alleges the pro­to­col is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al as applied to Ms. Pike ​“because it fails to pro­vide a con­tin­gency plan with emer­gency med­ical ser­vices on-site in the event of a botch,” and because of these inad­e­qua­cies, the new pro­to­col ​“is sure or very like­ly to result in unnec­es­sary and super­added pain and suf­fer­ing, ter­ror, and dis­grace” for Ms. Pike.

Importantly, Ms. Pike’s suit also rais­es con­cerns about the use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal as an exe­cu­tion drug giv­en her exist­ing health con­di­tions. According to media wit­ness­es who saw Byron Black’s exe­cu­tion, Mr. Black ​“moaned and made a state­ment express­ing pain dur­ing his exe­cu­tion.” An autop­sy report for Mr. Black showed that he expe­ri­enced pul­monary ede­ma, the fill­ing of his lungs with flu­id, and his heart con­tin­ued to beat for at least two min­utes after Tennessee Department of Corrections offi­cials announced his death. Just two months lat­er, dur­ing Harold Nichol’s exe­cu­tion, media wit­ness­es also report­ed heavy sighs and groans from the prisoner. 

The law­suit states that Ms. Pike suf­fers from sev­er­al con­di­tions that are not account­ed for by Tennessee’s pen­to­bar­bi­tal pro­to­col. According to the suit, Ms. Pike has Thrombocytopenia/​Thrombocytosis (a blood-clot­ting con­di­tion), Bipolar dis­or­der, PTSD, hyper­lipi­demia, and ​“small veins that make inser­tion of a nee­dle dif­fi­cult.” Because of the blood-clot­ting con­di­tion, the suit alleges exe­cu­tion by pen­to­bar­bi­tal will ​“very like­ly pro­duce an even more severe pat­tern of frothy blood in the lungs. This is death by drown­ing in one’s own blood.” The law­suit argues that because of her med­ical con­di­tions, ​“there is a sub­stan­tial risk that [Ms. Pike] will expe­ri­ence unnec­es­sary super­added pain and suf­fer­ing, ter­ror, and disgrace.”

According to sep­a­rate court fil­ings, by the time of Ms. Slemmer’s mur­der, Ms. Pike had already endured a life­time of trau­ma, sex­u­al abuse, and neglect. In September 2024, after 28 years in func­tion­al soli­tary con­fine­ment, coun­sel for Ms. Pike reached a set­tle­ment with the state that would allow her to work and social­ize with oth­er women in gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. The agree­ment gave her equiv­a­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties to the men on death row, includ­ing a job, shared meals with oth­er incar­cer­at­ed women, and more time out of her cell. ​“For the last near­ly 30 years, Ms. Pike has been sub­ject­ed to soli­tary con­fine­ment in a cell the size of a park­ing space, where she has had near­ly no mean­ing­ful human con­tact,” said Angela Bergman, an attor­ney for Ms. Pike.

Ms. Pike is seek­ing a per­ma­nent injunc­tion against use of the new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, the addi­tion of a con­tin­gency plan includ­ing life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures if the exe­cu­tion goes awry, and the removal of the 14-day iso­la­tion peri­od. Prisoners Terry King and Donald Middlebrooks have received stays of exe­cu­tions to allow for their legal chal­lenges to the state’s pre­vi­ous pro­to­cols to be heard, and Ms. Pike is ask­ing for the same legal protection.