Christa Pike’s legal team has proposed hanging as an alternative execution method during an ongoing multi-day hearing challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.
The 49-year-old, currently the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, faces execution on September 30 in Nashville. Her attorneys, Luke Ihnen and Stephen Ferrell of Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, opened the hearing Tuesday before Judge W. Mark Ward in Davidson County Chancery Court.
Ihnen addressed the court regarding the state’s recent execution history.
“As we all saw with Tony Carruthers, the State does not have the qualified, trained personnel in place to carry out Christa’s execution in a way that will not lead to a gruesome spectacle,” he said.
Ihnen continued with the team’s legal strategy.
“We plan to make those arguments to the Court and are confident Judge Ward will share our assessment that Christa’s execution as planned is inherently unconstitutional and must be enjoined,” he added.
The defense emphasizes Pike’s specific medical vulnerabilities. She has small veins and suffers from thrombocytosis, a rare blood condition causing excessive bleeding. Her team warns that pentobarbital lethal injection could produce what they describe as “bloody froth in the lungs.”
A legal filing elaborated on the protocol’s failures.
“The new protocol fails to account for any unique physical characteristics of [Ms. Pike] that may affect the efficacy of or the risk of harm caused by the new protocol,” the document stated.
Supreme Court precedent requires inmates challenging execution methods to propose feasible alternatives. Pike’s team first suggested a butterfly needle approach, arguing that if “inserted by qualified and trained medical staff,” it would “significantly reduces the substantial risk of unnecessary pain.”
They also presented hanging as a secondary option. Tennessee’s last execution of a woman, in 1820, employed this method. The filing contended that “Hanging significantly reduces a substantial risk of unnecessary and severe or superadded pain, terror, and disgrace when compared to the current protocol.”
Beyond physical health, the defense argues Pike’s severe trauma history makes an all-male execution team constitutionally problematic. They claim the process would force her to relive past sexual abuse.
Tennessee’s attorneys countered that these claims fall “far short” of proving serious suffering.
In the viral moment that spawned decades of legal battles, Pike was convicted in 1995 of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 at the time. Her teenage boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, received a life sentence. Another accomplice testified against them and received probation. Prosecutors detailed that Pike threw asphalt at Slemmer’s head, used a meat cleaver and box cutter, and carved a pentagram on the victim’s forehead.
Judge Ward will submit findings to the Tennessee Supreme Court following the hearing’s conclusion.