Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, September 30, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. If carried out as scheduled, the execution would make Pike the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in more than two centuries.

Background of the Case

Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps Center.

According to prosecutors, Pike considered Slemmer a romantic rival because of her relationship with fellow student Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time. In January 1995, Pike, Shipp and another student, Shadolla Peterson, led Slemmer to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus, where she was killed.

Pike was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
Final Appeals Denied
In the days leading up to the scheduled execution, Pike exhausted her remaining legal options.

The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected her final legal challenge, while Governor Bill Lee said he would not grant clemency. The U.S. Supreme Court also declined to halt the execution on Tuesday.

Pike had challenged both her conviction and the state’s method of execution. Earlier in the week, she said she was “at peace” regardless of whether clemency was granted.

How the Execution Is Conducted

Tennessee law establishes strict rules governing who may attend an execution. Witnesses are limited to authorized prison personnel, judicial representatives, family members and a small number of journalists.

The prison warden or an associate warden oversees the procedure to ensure that state protocols are followed. A physician is present to monitor vital signs and formally pronounce the time of death.

Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol uses pentobarbital.

State officials, including representatives from the attorney general’s office and the sheriff of the county where the crime occurred, may also be present during the procedure.

Who Is Permitted to Witness the Execution

Members of the victim’s family and individuals selected by Pike were permitted to observe the execution from designated viewing rooms.

Colleen Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, and stepfather, Raul Martinez, planned to attend. In a Facebook post, Raul Martinez said the family would be present on the morning of September 30 to witness the carrying out of the sentence.

May Martinez has spoken publicly about the decades her family has spent waiting for the case to reach its conclusion. Remembering her daughter, she said that Colleen “trusted everybody, and that was her downfall.”

Pike was also permitted to have her defense attorney and a spiritual adviser present. According to records, she requested that her spiritual adviser assist her with meditation during her final moments.

A Case More Than Three Decades in the Making

The scheduled execution came more than 30 years after Colleen Slemmer’s death, bringing the long-running capital case to another significant stage.

For Slemmer’s family, the execution represented the culmination of a legal process that had continued for most of their lives since 1995. The case had remained active through decades of appeals and legal challenges, keeping Pike’s death sentence in the public and judicial spotlight.