Christa Pike Is Running Out of Time — and Her Final Request Is Not to Die Alone
Christa Pike is running out of time.
Within weeks, Tennessee plans to execute her. The only woman on the state’s death row, Pike was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer when Pike was just 18.
Now 50 years old, Pike is facing the end of her life.
But what frightens her most is not death itself. It is how she may be forced to die.
For much of her childhood, Pike says she was repeatedly sexually abused by men—beginning when she was just five years old, again at 11, and later at 17. Her lawyers argue that years of trauma, combined with serious mental-health problems, shaped the young woman who ultimately committed a horrific crime.
None of that diminishes the suffering of Colleen Slemmer, whose life was violently taken. Her murder remains at the center of the case—and the pain left behind for her family can never be undone.
But as Pike’s September 30 execution date approaches, a different question is demanding attention: Can a person be held accountable for an unimaginable crime while still recognizing the profound trauma and mental illness that helped shape her life?
Pike’s attorneys are asking Tennessee for mercy on two fronts. First, they want her death sentence commuted so that she can spend the rest of her life in prison rather than face execution.
If the execution goes forward, they are asking for another form of mercy: that Pike not be physically restrained by male officers while medical personnel insert the IV lines required for the lethal injection.
Tennessee has not committed to granting that request.
And so the clock continues to tick.
This case now stands at the intersection of grief, justice, trauma, mental illness, and the death penalty. There is no way to erase what happened to Colleen Slemmer. But there is also a difficult question about what society chooses to do with someone whose own childhood was marked by years of violence and abuse.
As September 30 approaches, Tennessee must decide not only whether Christa Pike will die—but how.