Entries tagged with “Christa Pike”
Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Jan 27, 2026
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,…
Women
,Dec 03, 2025
Women in Prison and on Death Row: A Global Analysis
*The Guardian’s* recent four-part series examines the experiences of women in prison around the world, with a focus on those facing the death penalty. The series illuminates a largely overlooked issue within global criminal legal systems: the failure to recognize how gender-based violence shapes women’s journeys to incarceration and death row. The global incarceration of women has reached its highest levels, with more than 733,000 women and girls held in prisons…
Women
,Oct 06, 2025
Tennessee’s Execution of Christa Pike Would Make Her the First Woman to be Executed in the State in Over 200 Years
In an order dated September 30, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set an execution date for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. If her execution proceeds as scheduled on September 30, 2026, Ms. Pike will be the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years and the only person executed in Tennessee for a crime committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era. > “Life imprisonment is a proper punishment for Christa, just as it…
Conditions on Death Row
,Jul 22, 2025
Texas Pilot Program Allows for Less Restrictive Conditions for Some on Death Row for First Time in Decades
Recent reporting from the *Houston Chronicle* describes a pilot program begun in February of last year which has allowed a select group of prisoners on Texas’ death row the opportunity to experience loosened confinement conditions. About a dozen individuals on Texas’ death row are being allowed to mingle in a common room, share meals, and spend time outside of their cells without handcuffs or shackles. As the *Chronicle* reports,“instead of shouting to each…
Conditions on Death Row
,Women
,Sep 30, 2024
Rulings for Two Death-Sentenced Prisoners Recognize Devastating Harm Caused by Solitary Confinement
Scientists and other experts are unanimous in their conclusion that indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement causes serious harm, and the United Nations says it amounts to torture — yet most death-sentenced people in America are confined to these extreme conditions of isolation and deprivation for years. As of 2020, a dozen states routinely kept death-sentenced prisoners in single cells for at least twenty-two hours a day with little-to-no human contact.
Issues
Conditions on Death Row
,Women
,Sep 05, 2023
Sole Woman on Tennessee Death Row, Age 18 at Time of Crime, Raises New Appeal Based on Youthfulness
Attorneys for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a motion on August 30 to re-open her appeals based on a recent decision from the Tennessee Supreme Court. In 2022, the Court ruled in State v. Booker that mandatory life sentences in homicide cases are unconstitutional when imposed on juveniles, drawing on U.S. Supreme Court precedent that held that juveniles are less mature, more vulnerable to peer pressure, and generally less culpable…