A decades-long capital punishment case is moving toward its final act after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal to halt the execution of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike, clearing the way for a historic milestone that has not been seen in the state in more than two centuries.
Pike, now 50, has spent nearly 30 years on death row following her 1996 conviction and death sentence for the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow teen classmate at a job training program for at-risk youth. At the time of the killing, Pike was just 18 years old. Court records detail that she carried out the attack alongside her then-boyfriend, who assisted her in beating, torturing, and ultimately killing Slemmer in a brutal assault.
In the hours leading up to her scheduled lethal injection, Pike’s legal team turned to the nation’s highest court to file an emergency petition, seeking an 11th-hour stay of execution. The Supreme Court’s decision to deny that request leaves no remaining federal barriers to the punishment moving forward.
This outcome came just days after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, the state’s top executive, rejected a separate plea for clemency on Monday, confirming he would not use his executive power to intervene or commute Pike’s sentence to life in prison.
If the execution proceeds as planned at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Pike will make history as the first woman to be executed in Tennessee since the early 1800s. Nationwide, executions of women remain extremely rare: data shows only 18 women have been put to death across the United States since the 1970s, a stark contrast to the 1,663 men executed in that same 50-plus year period.
The case has drawn renewed national attention to gender disparities in capital punishment, as well as the long-standing debate over the use of the death penalty in the United States, as correctional authorities make final preparations for the scheduled execution.