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. 

In 1995, Ms. Pike, then just 18 years old, joined with two oth­er teens in the mur­der of nine­teen-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who Ms. Pike knew from the Knoxville Job Corp. Ms. Pike was the only one of the three to be cap­i­tal­ly charged. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sen­tence for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mur­der and, accord­ing to report­ing by CBS, will be eli­gi­ble for parole in November 2025. The third teenag­er involved in the crime, Shadolla Peterson, who was 19 at the time, tes­ti­fied against Ms. Pike and Mr. Shipp and received probation. 

According to court fil­ings, by the time Ms. Pike joined the Knoxville Job Corps at age 18, she had already endured a life­time of trau­ma and abuse. She was exposed to alco­hol in utero, which severe­ly dam­aged the area of her brain that reg­u­lates impuls­es and behav­ior. She was born into pover­ty and neglect; court records show that she ​“crawl[ed] around through piles of dog stool all over the house” as a baby. Court records also note that, as a child, she was raped mul­ti­ple times, was depen­dent on alco­hol and mar­i­jua­na by age 12, and attempt­ed sui­cide sev­er­al times as a teenager. 

At her tri­al, two defense experts tes­ti­fied that Ms. Pike’s men­tal health and the pres­sures of a peer group sit­u­a­tion caused her to esca­late the attack on Colleen Slemmer when the teenagers ini­tial­ly intend­ed only to scare her. Dr. Eric Engum believed that Ms. Pike ​“sim­ply lost con­trol,” and Dr. William Bernet tes­ti­fied that group set­tings can cause ​“col­lec­tive aggres­sion,” to which young peo­ple may be more sus­cep­ti­ble. Dr. Bernet con­clud­ed that the ​“end result is that they engage in some kind of vio­lent, extreme­ly violent activity.” 

In 1996, Ms. Pike became the youngest woman sen­tenced to death in Tennessee in the mod­ern death penal­ty era and remains the only woman still on the state’s death row (two oth­er women were sen­tenced to death but both had their sen­tences com­mut­ed). For thir­ty years, Ms. Pike was sub­ject to soli­tary con­fine­ment in a space her attor­ney Angela Berman described as ​“the size of a park­ing space[.]” In September 2024, Ms. Pike reached an agree­ment with the state that 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. 

Ms. Pike is one of an extreme­ly small num­ber of women sen­tenced to death for crimes com­mit­ted at age 18 since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. Of the three oth­er women sen­tenced to death in this group, one was exon­er­at­ed, one had her sen­tenced com­mut­ed, and one is on death row in California, where a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions has been in place since 2019. Death sen­tences for women of any age are also extreme­ly rare. Of the just under 9,000 indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to death since 1976, only 179, or 2% , have been women. 

Research has also not­ed many shared char­ac­ter­is­tics of women sen­tenced to death. One study that found the vast major­i­ty (96%) of these women expe­ri­enced gen­der-based vio­lence pri­or to their con­vic­tions and that pros­e­cu­tors who dis­miss the mit­i­gat­ing val­ue of child­hood abuse, sex­u­al vio­lence, and exploita­tion demon­strate a fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nec­tion from the real­i­ty of the women’s lived expe­ri­ences. Only three women nation­al­ly have been sen­tenced to death in the last five years, reflect­ing the reluc­tance of juries to sen­tence women to death and the gen­er­al shift away from sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States — oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty has near­ly tripled over the past three decades. 

Executions of women of any age are also extreme­ly rare. While 1641 indi­vid­u­als have been exe­cut­ed in the United States since 1976, only 18, or 1%, of those were women. The last woman to be exe­cut­ed in the United States was Amber McLaughlin, who was killed by lethal injec­tion in Missouri in January 2023. The last time Tennessee exe­cut­ed a woman was in 1820. 

In a June 2021 motion, Ms. Pike’s attor­neys asked the court to com­mute her sen­tence, not­ing that she was ​“only eigh­teen” at the time of the crime and was ​“suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness along with organ­ic brain dam­age.” They point­ed to her youth, ​“sex­u­al vic­tim­iza­tion and trau­mat­ic upbring­ing, as well as her severe men­tal ill­ness” to jus­ti­fy com­mu­ta­tion. When Ms. Pike was sen­tenced, the court con­duct­ed a pro­por­tion­al­i­ty review, which com­pared her case to eight oth­er cas­es. In their June 2021 motion, Ms. Pike’s attorney’s note that ​“six of those defen­dants are no longer sub­ject to exe­cu­tion” because of the Supreme Court’s 2005 deci­sion in Roper v. Simmons to exclude those under the age of 18 from eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty. A DPI study released in April 2025 sug­gests that in the twen­ty years since Roper, the sci­en­tif­ic, pub­lic pol­i­cy, legal, and com­mon-sense ratio­nale that sup­port­ed the Supreme Court’s deci­sion has become stronger in almost every respect — with one excep­tion. The Roper Court said age 18 was ​“the point where soci­ety draws the line for many pur­pos­es between child­hood and adult­hood.” Today, a grow­ing body of evi­dence now sug­gests that the line has been redrawn. 

This point has been made by courts in Ms. Pike’s case as well. In 2019, in a con­cur­ring opin­ion by Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Jane Stranch wrote that because Ms. Pike was 18 years old at the time of the crime her death sen­tence ​“like­ly” vio­lates the Eighth Amendment under the Supreme Court’s ​“prece­dent focus­ing on the less­er blame­wor­thi­ness and greater prospect for reform that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of youth.” She went on to say that “[h]ad she been 17 rather than 18 at the time of her crime, like her code­fen­dant Tadaryl Shipp, Christa Pike would not be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty.” Judge Stranch con­clud­ed, ​“I believe that society’s evolv­ing stan­dards of decen­cy like­ly do not per­mit the exe­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als who were under 21 at the time of their offense” while still reluc­tant­ly agree­ing with the major­i­ty that Supreme Court prece­dent does not reach that far. 

Since the September 30, 2025, announce­ment of Ms. Pike’s exe­cu­tion date, Tennesseans for an Alternative to the Death Penalty have already col­lect­ed more than 2,500 sig­na­tures on a peti­tion ask­ing Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to stop Ms. Pike’s execution.