Tennessee’s sole female death row inmate, Christa Pike, is set to be the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Her execution is scheduled for September 30, 2026 — more than 30 years after authorities said Pike, then 18, violently killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
On Thursday, March 19, the state responded to a lawsuit Pike filed in January, in which Pike argued that the state’s execution method — lethal injection — goes against her constitutional and religious rights, USA Today reported.
The state contended in its response that Pike, now 50, has not sufficiently demonstrated that lethal injection would violate her constitutional rights, according to USA Today.
In her lawsuit, Pike argues that she will be prevented from communicating with her Buddhist spiritual advisor ahead of her scheduled execution, and that will restrict her “sincerely held religious belief of Buddhism,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Since she is also challenging the lethal injection execution method, she has to select a different means of execution, according to the center. However, in her lawsuit, Pike argues that choosing a different method goes against her Buddhist faith because it would make her a “participate[e] in any process leading to her own death.”
The state’s lethal injection method was changed in December 2024 to include one drug, pentobarbital, instead of three different drugs used in prior executions, the Nashville Banner reported.
Pike’s attorneys write in the lawsuit, according to the newspaper, that the protocol established in December 2024 violates her constitutional rights because of her “unique medical conditions,” and “that it 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.”
“Because of these failures, the new protocol is sure or very likely to result in unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace,” her attorneys also wrote in the filing, obtained by the Nashville Banner.
Pike has been imprisoned following her conviction in the death of Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps, USA Today reported.
Pike had been dating a 17-year-old in the Job Corps and perceived Slemmer as someone who was trying to encroach on their relationship, according to the outlet, which cited prosecutors’ arguments during Pike’s jury trial.
Pike, her boyfriend and friend are accused of leading Slemmer into the woods on January 12, 1995, when Pike allegedly brutally attacked and killed Slemmer, the outlet reported.
The then 18-year-old was accused of smashing Slemmer’s head with asphalt, torturing her and cutting her throat, according to witness testimony, the Nashville Banner reported.
Pike’s boyfriend was sentenced to life in prison for his alleged role in the killing, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Her friend was sentenced to probation after she testified against Pike and Pike’s boyfriend.
Court filings said that ahead of the murder, Pike experienced a tumultuous life involving trauma, neglect, poverty and sexual assault, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.
In a 2023 letter to The Tennessean, Pike wrote that she has “changed drastically” and that “It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime.”
