Christa Pike’s legal team has formally requested that only female corrections staff be present if her September 30 execution proceeds.
Pike, 50, has spent nearly three decades on Tennessee’s death row after she was convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. She received the death penalty in 1996 and has been incarcerated ever since. If executed, she will become the first woman put to death by the state in more than 200 years.
The all-female execution team request stems from Pike’s reported history of sexual abuse at the hands of men. Her attorneys stated that she is “terrified” at the prospect of being restrained on the gurney by male staff during the lethal injection procedure.
Her lawyers have pursued multiple avenues to halt the execution. They filed a 200-plus-page clemency petition with Governor Bill Lee’s office on September 2, asking that her sentence be commuted to life without parole. The petition states that Pike “respectfully asks Governor Bill Lee to grant her clemency by commuting her sentence to life without the possibility of parole.”
The document emphasizes her transformation during incarceration. “Christa can still be useful,” it reads. “Her story of growth from a traumatized teenager to a generous, empathetic woman has the power to help others choose a different path. It already has.”
Pike’s attorneys have also raised medical concerns about the lethal injection protocol. They argue that she has a condition that would make the procedure unnecessarily painful. Matt Wells, Deputy Director of Reprieve US, echoed these worries, stating there’s a “high risk” that Pike will experience “a prolonged and agonizing death.”
Senior Judge Mark Ward ruled against this claim, determining that Pike’s condition would not prevent medical personnel from starting an intravenous line for the execution.
In a documentary titled “Christa Pike’s Last Fight to Stop Her Execution,” Pike described her psychological state as the date approaches. She was filmed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville discussing her final days and her reaction to receiving an execution date.
“I know I said I believed a date would never be set, but now that one has been set, it’s like a roulette wheel of thought and your actual brain is the ball bouncing around,” Pike said in the documentary. “My nerves are shredded. When I do sleep, my brain eats itself.”
She continued: “I have the most horrible nightmares, but I think what has been worse is that they told me a year ahead of time. And so, every day I’ve woken up and lived that thought all day, every day, every waking moment.”
Pike was 18 when she and accomplice Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, lured Slemmer to a remote spot near the University of Tennessee campus. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal Shipp from her. The pair attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and a piece of asphalt, and Pike later kept a piece of her skull as a trophy. Shipp received a life sentence with possibility of parole.
Governor Lee had not publicly responded to the clemency petition as of the filing date.
Pike’s case has drawn international attention due to the rarity of female executions in the United States and the specific circumstances of her request for an all-female execution team.