Christa Gail Pike is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on September 30, more than three decades after she was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

The Tennessee Supreme Court formally set Pike’s execution for September 30, 2026. Unless a court or other appropriate authority intervenes, the state is preparing to carry out her death sentence by lethal injection. Pike, now 50, is the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row.

Her case dates back to Knoxville in January 1995. Prosecutors said Pike, then 18, participated in the brutal killing of Slemmer, a fellow student at the Job Corps center the women attended. Pike was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Jurors found aggravating circumstances including that the killing involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond what was necessary to cause death.

Pike was 20 when she received her death sentence in 1996, making her one of the youngest women sentenced to death during the modern era of capital punishment in the United States.

Thirty years later, her attorneys are asking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to spare her life.

Pike’s legal team has submitted a 226-page clemency petition asking Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The petition presents arguments surrounding Pike’s youth at the time of the crime, her history of childhood abuse and trauma, and her mental health, arguing that circumstances surrounding her life and development were not adequately presented to the jury that sentenced her to death.

The request does not challenge the fact that Slemmer was murdered or erase the crime for which Pike was convicted. Instead, her attorneys are asking the governor to allow Pike to spend the remainder of her life in prison rather than permit the execution to proceed.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has already rejected an earlier request for a certificate of commutation when it set the execution date, concluding that Pike had not presented circumstances warranting the court itself issuing such a certificate. Her attorneys’ separate clemency request to the governor remains another potential avenue for stopping the execution.

Pike has also continued pursuing litigation as the date approaches. Tennessee court records show multiple filings in her cases throughout the summer and September, including additional briefs and filings from outside organizations.

If the execution proceeds, it would mark an extraordinary moment in Tennessee history. Historical records cited in Pike’s prior court filings indicate Tennessee has not executed a woman since 1819, meaning Pike would become the first woman put to death by the state in more than two centuries.

For now, September 30 remains the date.

With only days remaining, Pike’s fate could ultimately turn on whether Gov. Lee grants clemency or whether continuing litigation produces an order stopping the execution. Without intervention, Tennessee is preparing to carry out the death sentence imposed on Pike three decades ago.