Christa Pike Execution 2026: What Is Set for Sept. 30, and Who Can Still Stop It
Bottom line: Tennessee has a date — Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026 — and as of this morning nobody has called it off. Christa Gail Pike's lawyers asked the governor for mercy on Sept. 3. He has not answered.
Key takeaways
- Pike has been under a death sentence since 1996 for the killing of Colleen Slemmer, 19, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville. Between the crime and the date now on the calendar sit 31 years.
- She is the only woman on Tennessee's death row. If the execution goes ahead, she would be the first woman the state has put to death in more than 200 years.
- The courts have mostly run out. A special master found in August that her challenge to the lethal-injection protocol fell short, which leaves executive clemency as the realistic off-ramp.
When is Christa Pike scheduled to be executed?
Sept. 30, 2026, by lethal injection. That is nine days from this morning.
Tennessee moved to a single-drug pentobarbital protocol in late 2024, replacing the three-drug method it used for years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The state carried out three executions in 2025 — Oscar Smith, Byron Black and Harold Nichols — after a long pause.
What was she convicted of?
The killing of Colleen Slemmer on Jan. 12, 1995, on the University of Tennessee agriculture campus in Knoxville. Both women were 18 and 19 and both were enrolled in the Job Corps program there.
Pike was 18. She was convicted and sentenced to death in March 1996, at 20, one of the youngest women ever sent to death row in the United States.
Court records describe a long and violent attack. We are not going to walk through it here; Slemmer's family has lived with those details in print for three decades, and the part that is still being decided has nothing to do with retelling them.
What happened to the other two teenagers?
Two other people were charged. Only Pike faced the death penalty.
| Name | Age in 1995 | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Christa Gail Pike | 18 | Convicted 1996, sentenced to death |
| Tadaryl Shipp | 17 | Life sentence, later parole-eligible |
| Shadolla Peterson | 18 | Testified for the prosecution; served no prison time |
Shipp was a juvenile at the time, which took capital punishment off the table for him under later U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Peterson's cooperation is the reason much of the state's account exists. Age and mental health cut differently in every state — Wisconsin is still arguing about Morgan Geyser, who was 12 when she was charged.
👉 The age gap between Pike and Shipp is 15 months. It is the whole difference between a life sentence and a death warrant.Who can still stop it?
Gov. Bill Lee. Under the Tennessee constitution the clemency power is his alone, and there is no deadline forcing him to use it or announce that he will not.
Pike's legal team filed the petition on Sept. 3, asking that the sentence be commuted to life without parole. It leans on her childhood — documented abuse, rape and neglect before she turned 18 — and on bipolar and post-traumatic stress diagnoses made after she was imprisoned. Her attorney Kelly Gleason has framed the ask around Pike's own history as a child victim.
Groups tracking the case, including the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, argue she would be the only person Tennessee has executed in the modern era for a crime committed before 21.
What have the courts already decided?
In January she filed a religious challenge to the execution protocol, arguing in part that it limits clergy access in the final hours. She has also argued that a blood-clotting condition makes pentobarbital especially risky for her.
On Aug. 21 a special master, Judge Mark Ward, found she had not met the legal standard, and reported that the execution could proceed. Related filings are still live, so a late stay is not impossible — it just is not the way to bet.
One earlier fight she did win: a 2024 settlement moved her out of solitary confinement after 28 years, per the Death Penalty Information Center.
Why is this getting national attention now?
Three reasons stack on top of each other. It would be a first for the state in two centuries; the defendant was barely an adult when the crime happened; and the clemency file reads less like a legal brief than a case history. Capital cases rarely get this far now — Idaho's plea deal took the death penalty off the table for Bryan Kohberger before a jury was ever picked.
Television found the case long before this month. Sinclair stations aired a documentary, "Dead Woman Walking," examining the death-row case, and the story has turned up in cable true-crime series for years. None of the three network newsmagazines has an episode on the schedule for it, and with Dateline and 20/20 both opening new seasons on Friday, the week's night-by-night grid is where any late addition would show up first. Our viewing guide lists where each show streams, and the Dateline page tracks the premiere.
What else lands in the same nine days?
An unusually crowded stretch. Larry Millete is sentenced in San Diego on Sept. 29 for a murder with no body, and the same morning a Massachusetts judge takes up what happens after the Lindsay Clancy mistrial.
Two weeks out, the Naresh Bhatt trial starts in Virginia. The Indiana Court of Appeals heard Richard Allen's appeal in the Delphi case at 10 a.m. ET today. Everything we are following sits in Case Updates.
How do you follow Sept. 30?
- Clemency, if it comes, is announced by the governor's office and usually moves fast once it is decided.
- Tennessee allows a small group of media witnesses; their pool report is what the wire services build from.
- We will update this page the same day with whatever is decided.
FAQ
Is the Christa Pike execution still happening? As of Sept. 21 the date stands. No stay and no clemency decision has been announced.
Has Gov. Bill Lee ruled on clemency? Not yet. The petition was filed Sept. 3 and he has no deadline to respond.
Who was Colleen Slemmer? A 19-year-old from Florida enrolled in the Knoxville Job Corps program, where she and Pike knew each other.
Sources
- WVLT (Knoxville) — clemency petition filed ahead of the September execution
- NewsChannel 5 Nashville — crime date, 1996 conviction, co-defendants, Aug. 21 special-master ruling
- WATE (Knoxville) — what the clemency petition asks Gov. Bill Lee to do
- Death Penalty Information Center — pentobarbital protocol, religious challenge, 2024 solitary settlement
- Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide — case background and age-at-offense argument
- Nashville Banner — what her lawyers point to as the date nears